Along Came Sophie
by LaceyoftheTypewriter
Summary: Dean is still fighting supernatural crime with Sam when a pretty young plot twist named Sophie Gardner shows up claiming to be Dean's 15-year-old daughter. As she worms her way into his heart, he comes to realize what exactly he's been missing, and how far he'll go to fix what's broken.
1. Chapter 1: Taken

_Chapter 1: Taken_

"Sam, a little help here!" Dean yelled out, holding the vampire's head back at arms length as she bared her sharp teeth and snarled at him. Dean tried to reach the long knife that was just a hairsbreadth away from his fingertips, but he couldn't quite grasp it, and the vampire's strength wasn't waning.

He looked over at Sam, who was battling another vampire, one of the group that had been terrorizing a small town in North Carolina. Sam was moments away from finally decapitating the bastard, and Dean watched as his brother lashed out at the vampire with his weapon and the monster's head toppled listlessly and bloodily to the floor.

The vampire Dean was fighting off heard the thump of her companion's head hit the ground, and she turned around, her blonde curls whipping Dean in the face. "Travis!" she screamed, her teeth retracting back into her gums. "Travis, no!"

Dean took the opportunity to lunge to the side and grab his weapon, and the vampire whipped back around and opened her mouth, hissing as she made for his neck. It was too late for her, though, and soon her head was rolling on the floor next to her supposed lover's.

Dean pushed her body off of his. "I freaking hate vampires," he exclaimed. Sam walked over and helped him to his feet.

"I'm not exactly a fan of them either. At least we finally wasted the rest of this group."

"You're telling me. If we had to spend another day in this dopey little down I'd have gone stir crazy."

Sam grinned as they began to walk out of the abandoned farmhouse the vampire herd had been holed up in. "You passed stir crazy four days ago, Dean."

"Well I say we spend the night, hit up that diner with the hot waitress tomorrow morning, and then get the hell out of Dodge," Dean said as they neared his Impala and he took out his keys.

"Sounds good to me," Sam said, sliding into the passenger seat as Dean cranked the car up. Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog" began to blast through the speakers, and Dean yelled along with it as Sam closed his eyes and tried to rest.

* * *

Dean was the first to wake up the next morning. It was bright out, and when Dean turned over to look at the dusty alarm clock supplied by the crappy motel they'd set up camp in he saw that it was nine in the morning, later than they'd slept in during their entire stay in North Carolina. He groaned and rolled over, stretching out his aching muscles. He was getting too old for this. Sure, he was still young and dashing by the standards of the world, but for a hunter, he was starting to feel the repercussions of constantly battling the monsters of the world.

He sat up and cracked his back and watched as Sam rolled over, opening his eyes. "Dude," Sam grumbled, rubbing his face with his hands. "What time is it?"

"Nine," Dean said, grabbing a T-shirt off the ground and throwing it on. "That diner is calling my name, Sammy, so put some pep in that step."

"I think you mean that _waitress_ is calling your name," he groaned, sitting up and cracking his back just as Dean had.

"Call it what you will, we've got to go. I think her shift ends at ten thirty."

Sam groaned and began to get dressed, and forty-five minutes later all of their research, clothes, weapons, and trash had been picked up from the motel and they were ready to clear out.

"You know, Dean," Sam said as they threw their bags into the back of the Impala, "we've stayed in some crappy hotels, but we reached a new low with this place."

"It was practically free," Dean defended.

"Yeah, I know," Sam said, sliding into the passenger seat as Dean made his way into the driver's seat. "But next time I say we take the motel that's ten dollars more a night and gives us running water."

"Look, we'll find a better place tonight and take a decent shower. Until then, stop bitching and let's go get some breakfast."

Sam just gave Dean an annoyed look as they pulled out of the parking spot and made the two minute drive to Deirdre's Diner, a little hole in the wall diner that they had been frequenting for the week and a half they'd been in town. Dean had declared that the diner had the best pancakes in America, but Sam doubted that was a genuine compliment, seeing as he had given it just after the hot waitress had bent down and revealed her cleavage to him.

Inside, Dean and Sam took their usual seat in the back corner of the diner, and Dean eyed the menu. "I'm feeling like I want a celebratory All Star combo," he declared.

"You always feel like that," Sam pointed out.

"Yeah, but today I've got something to back it up with. We just took out a murderous pack of bloodsuckers, Sam. Enjoy it."

At that moment, the waitress came up to the table, her shirt unbuttoned to the point where the top of her leopard print bra was visible. She had glittery eyeshadow and stick straight black hair. "Well, hello again, boys. What will it be this morning?"

Dean shot her his try-hard smile. "I'll have the All Star special, with scrambled eggs and hashbrowns and a coffee."

She wrote it down, grinning. "Hardy breakfast," she noted.

"I'm a hardy man," Dean replied, winking at her.

She grinned slyly and looked at Sam, who had mock-gagged into his hand. "And you?" she asked, a little more coldly. Apparently his gesture had not gone unnoticed.

"I'll just have a coffee," Sam replied.

"I'll have that right out for you guys," she said, quickly walking away.

Dean glared at Sam. "Dude. That was my chance and you chose that moment to fake gag?"

"Pathetic isn't a good look on you," Sam said.

The bell rang signaling someone walking into the diner. Dean glanced up and saw a short, petite teenage girl walking in, her strawberry blonde hair braided into pigtails. He turned his head back to his brother, his interest gone after realizing she was young enough to be his daughter. "Look, I've got a chance of a raw and gritty back alley hookup before we hit the road. Why would you deprive me of this?"

"Look at that waitress, Dean. She's a walking STD."

"That's a little harsh, coming from the man who's banged werewolves and demons."

"Hey!" Sam exclaimed. "_A _werewolf and _a _demon. Not plural."

"Look, the fact that you even have to defend yourself is not a good sign. I just want a good, human screw-fest. Is that so wrong?"

There was another chime, and Dean looked over and saw a man walk in. He was tall and buff, with slick blonde hair and a large overcoat. Something about him looked very familiar, but Dean couldn't put his finger on it. Something in the shape of his nose, in the curve of his mouth.

The man turned slightly, and Dean could see a gun clipped to his pants underneath his coat. Immediately, his jokes were thrown aside. "Sam," he said under his breath. "Don't turn around. The man who just walked in is packing."

"What?" Sam asked. "Do we know him?"

"I don't know. Maybe. I feel like I've seen him before."

Suddenly the man pulled out his gun. "Oh, no," Dean muttered.

"Everybody, get down!" the man yelled. Sam whipped his head around and stared at the man. There were a few screams, and a baby started crying. "I said, get down! Heads on the ground!"

Everyone was suddenly down to the ground, except for Dean and Sam. They stood up.

"Hey, man," Dean said, lifting his hands up. "You don't want to do this."

The man grinned. "Mr. Winchester," he said greasily, and he flashed Dean a smile. Suddenly, a pair of vampire fangs slipped out of his gums, and then they quickly slid back in before anyone else could see. Dean suddenly knew where he'd seen the man before. He looked uncannily like the blonde vampire they'd killed the night before, like he could be her father. "You took something of mine."

At the sound of Dean's name, the girl who had walked in earlier lifted up her head from the ground, slowly. She stared at Dean, a look of terror and disbelief in her eyes. Dean looked back, fearing for the lives of everyone in the diner. "You want me? Fine. Just put the gun down and don't hurt anyone here, okay?" Dean said, taking a step forward.

"Dean," Sam said in a low voice. "What are you doing?"

The vampire shook his head. "Sorry, Winchester. You're not what I want right now."

He lunged forward and grabbed the teenage girl off of the ground. She cried out as the man pulled her close against him, the gun pressed against her temple. She was shaking, and her eyes were wide with terror.

Dean took another step forward. "Don't hurt her," he said calmly. "She's just a kid. Put the gun down and take me, okay? Let her be."

"I'll be in touch to let you know where I am," he said, and the girl whimpered as he drew circles on her skin with the tip of the gun. "There, there, sweetheart, there's no need to fear. Unless, of course, you're afraid of agonizing pain. In which case...well, maybe you should fear just a smidge." He smiled, his nose at her neck as he breathed in, and the girl began to shake. Dean felt a rush of anger fly through him. "Now that right there is a sweet smelling girl," he breathed, grinning viciously. "I'll see you around, Winchester. Don't show up, and Sophie here dies."

With that, he grabbed the girl by her hair and, with his gun aimed at her head, dragged her out of the diner.

Everyone began panicking, pulling out their phones and dialing 911, and Sam and Dean quickly slipped out of the diner, looking up and down the street for the vampire and the girl, but they were nowhere to be found.

"Damn it!" Dean yelled.

"We'll find him," Sam said, looking over at his brother. "Tonight. We'll go find him and we'll kill him."

"Sam, that girl's just a kid!"

"We'll save her, Dean. He has no reason to hurt her."

"No? I mean she's his meal of choice, so I can't see any reason that would be a conflict," Dean snapped, turning and walking towards the Impala.

"Dean, just relax for a moment."

"Relax? Sam, he looked like he wanted to torture her. She can't be more than sixteen."

"We'll find her," Sam said as they arrived at the Impala. "But first we need to find out about this vampire. And why the hell he'd take that girl. And how he knew who she was."

"So I guess we need to figure out who she is," Dean said, calming down a little bit as he slid into the driver's seat. "All we've got is a name. Sophie."

"We've got a name and a high school, Dean."

Dean turned towards his brother. "What?"  
"Didn't you see her backpack? It said Our Lady of Fatima Catholic High. I'm betting it was her school."

Dean shook his head, giving a slightly victorious smirk. "Sometimes I wonder how I spent years hunting without you and your attention to detail."

"I don't either. You're honestly pathetic without me."

"Whatever. To the library we go," he said, starting the car. "Damn it, I hate it every time I say that."

"Don't stress yourself too much, you know you'll be sleeping most of the time."

"What can I say, you're the nerdy one."

**Comment, favorite, follow, and let me know if I should continue and where you'd like to see the story go! ~ Lacey :)**


	2. Chapter 2: The Call

_Chapter 2: The Call_

Hours later, Dean was slamming his head against a dusty book while Sam stared diligently at the computer. "Dude," Dean said, his voice muffled by the book. "Do you know how many Sophies go to the ten different Our Lady of Fatimas in the country?"

"A lot," Sam admitted. "But if you narrow it to only the high school's on this side of the country, there's only about twenty."

"Are there pictures?"

"For some," he said. "None of which appear to be our Sophie."

"Damn it," Dean said. He paused for a moment, staring at the book. "What's a teenage girl doing alone in this random city in North Carolina anyway? Her school's not here, and as far as we've heard the police know as much about the girl as we do."

"Could be a runaway," Sam said.

"Wonderful," Dean groaned. Then his head shot up. "Try missing persons."

"What?"

"You said yourself she could be a runaway. Try missing persons."

Sam nodded and began typing away furiously on the computer, and then he grinned. "Got her."

Dean moved over to look at the screen. "Sophia Gardner. Reported missing by her friend Patrick Little two weeks ago. Last seen wearing jeans, boots, a green jacket, and a pink beanie. She's fifteen, a sophomore at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic High School in Apex, North Carolina."

"Reported missing by a friend and not her parents?" Sam said. "Odd."

"Says she lives with her stepfather."

"That it?"

"From what I can tell," Dean said, sitting back in his chair.

Sam shook his head, leaning forward. "Hold on, let me see if I can get some more on her." Sam continued typing away as Dean waited impatiently. "Yep, here we...ah."

"What?" Dean interjected.

"Guess her stepfather got custody of her after her mother was killed in a car accident a year and a half ago. No father in the picture, as far as I can tell. Maybe she didn't get along with her stepfather and decided to leave."

"Well, she should've stayed with him," Dean muttered. "So how does this vampire know her?"

"You've got me there. I have no clue. It could be anything."

At that moment, Dean's phone began ringing. A librarian ten feet away from them gave them an evil look, which Dean ignored as he pulled out his phone. He didn't recognize the number. "Hello?"

"Mr. Winchester!" At the sound of the familiar voice, Dean's blood ran hot with anger and the desire to kill. "I told you I'd give you some details on where I'm keeping pretty Sophie."

"Cut the crap," Dean snapped, trying to keep his voice down. "Where are you?"

"The same place you murdered my daughter last night," the vampire hissed. "The same place I'm going to murder this girl. Unless you care to try and stop me."

"Why her?" Dean asked. "How do you know her?"

There was a shuffle in the background, and his voice traveled farther away from the phone. "Stupid bitch, I told you not to make a sound!" There was the sound of someone being slapped hard, and a tiny female cry, and then the vampire's voice shifted back towards the phone. "The question you should be asking yourself, Mr. Winchester," the vampire sneered, "is how do _you _know her."

With that, he hung up, and Dean looked at Sam, a tightness in his throat that he couldn't explain. "He gave us the location."

"And?"

"Same place I killed his daughter."

"His daughter?" Sam reiterated. "Who...oh. The blonde vamp."

Dean nodded. "I guess this is his twisted eye for an eye revenge. Except I don't have a daughter, so he takes a random girl to be my punishment." He shook his head. "That girl is being tortured because of me."

"No. Because _we _didn't realize _we_ missed one of the sons of bitches in this town."

"Whatever," Dean said, shaking his head. "Either way, I say we go now. If he's not there, we can scope it out, and if he is we'll have a better chance in the daylight."

"Not much of a better chance," Sam noted. "It's so overcast today that he was able to walk into that diner without getting hurt at all."

"Still, we'll be able to see better than him, instead of the other way around."

"Alright. Fine. Let's go."

**Feedback is much appreciated! Review, favorite, follow, whatever you want! Thank you! ~ Lacey :)**


	3. Chapter 3: Eye for an Eye

_Chapter 3: Eye for an Eye_

The warehouse was dingy and dark despite the sun being out. Sam and Dean crept through it, long blades in their hands, vigilant and silent as they made their way through the same halls they'd snuck through the night before.

"What do you think that son of a bitch has done to her?" Dean asked quietly as they made he way through the building.

"I think we shouldn't think about it. All we need to worry about is that she's alive and we have to get her out that way," Sam said.

"I'm getting sick of vampires," Dean said after a moment's thought.

"Yeah, well, I'm getting sick of lots of things," Sam replied. "Your mopey, girly attitude included."

"Let's just gank this vamp and save the girl," Dean grumbled.

They kept moving, scoping the place out and trying to be as quiet as possible. After about ten minutes, Sam stuck his arm out and stopped Dean, placing a finger to his lips. "Hear that?" he whispered.

Dean craned his head, and soon enough he heard what Sam was hearing. It was the faint, faint voice of the evil bastard, talking in a slimy tone.

"Sophia, now, you know if you move it hurts more."

A small voice responded, obviously weakened and in pain. "Please, no more. Please." Dean's heart jumped to his throat.

"So sorry, sweetheart. The more you bleed, the easier it is to keep you here. And I have this idea the Winchesters aren't going to keep me waiting."

Dean started forward, but Sam held him back, shaking his head. "He could kill her if we just barge in there," he breathed. Dean clenched his teeth, but he didn't move again.

"What do you want from me?" they heard Sophie ask, her voice shaking.

"Nothing. I want you as bait."

"Then why are you hurting me?" she asked. "Why not throw me in a corner and leave me to rot?"

"Because I'm a vampire, sweetheart. I get hungry. And quite frankly, the thought of you in pain makes me very, very happy."

There was the sound of a knife being pulled from some sort of metal casing, and Dean closed his eyes as the girl began to plead. "No, please, please don't, no—" Her words were cut off with a scream, which caused Dean and Sam to visibly flinch. Her scream was suddenly muffled, and they could hear her cries diminish as they were covered up.

"As much as I love to hear you scream, darling Sophia, we can't have that anymore. I have a feeling the Winchester brothers are going to show up at any moment." There was a brief moment of silence, and then there was a muffled sound of Sophie making a disgusted cry, and then the vampire sighing in satisfaction. "Your blood tastes divine, child. I really must start drinking from younglings more often, you taste so...fresh. I bet if I bled you from other places it would taste even sweeter."

Dean was surprised when Sam broke before he did. Before he could do anything, his brother was barreling into the room. Dean hopped up and brandished his knife. "Damn it," he growled as he followed his brother through the door.

He froze as soon as he entered, surveying the scene in front of him. Sam was on the ground on the other side of the room, clutching his head, which was bleeding. It looked like he'd been thrown into a wall. Sophie's hands were chained above her head and her feet were locked to the ground, and there was blood running down her neck in a heavy stream. Less concerning were the bruises and scrapes on her arms and face, but they still acted effectively as fuel for Dean's anger.

The vampire was standing over Sam's practically immobile body. "I was wondering if you two were out there. You had me worried for a moment."

"Just cut the girl down and then we can start talking about your many, many issues," Dean said, glancing at Sophie nervously. She had been gagged, and she was losing blood, quickly. She lifted her head weakly and made eye contact with Dean. There was something so familiar about her gaze, but Dean didn't dwell on that. He needed to save her, and fast.

"I don't think so," the vampire said, walking over to Sophie and brushing some stray hairs out of her face. She turned her face away from his hand and he grabbed her chin, yanking it back towards him. "Sophia, stop it. What did I say about behaving?" She glared at him and tried to pull her head away, but the vampire was much stronger than she was. He leaned down and licked some of the blood off of her neck as she whimpered into her gag. "Delicious," he noted.

Dean stepped forward with his knife. "Get your hands off of her."

The vampire lifted his head up from Sophie's neck, but he kept her face in his hand. "Aren't you going to ask why?

"Why what? Why you're an evil dickbag? Not my problem. My problem is that you're still alive."

"Not what I meant," the vampire said. "Don't you want to know why I chose her?"

Dean froze. "What the hell do you mean?"

"Sophie here...she's special. See, you killed my daughter, Margo. She was my world. My everything. It's why I turned her once I figured out what I was, so that she could stay with me forever. And you killed her like it was nothing. So I made some calls and did some snooping. I've been around for a while; I have high friends in high places. And lo and behold, I found something of Dean Winchester's that even he didn't know he had, not more than a mile away from where I was."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Dean exclaimed.

The vampire pulled a small knife out of his pocket and slowly slid it down the back of Sophie's shirt. She whimpered as he ripped what was left of her shirt off of her body, leaving her in a black bra and a flimsy white tanktop. "This beautiful, breathing blood bag I have strung up here," the vampire sneered, tracing his knife up and down Sophie's arms, "is connected to you." He let the tip of the knife sink slowly into Sophie's left shoulder and she screamed out, the majority of her cries caught by the gag. Dean lunged forward, but the vampire shook his head. "No, no," he said, yanking the knife out of her skin and placing it at her throat and leaving a line of her own blood on her neck. "I don't think so."

Dean caught himself, slowing. "Fine," he said, trying to breathe evenly. "Okay. Don't hurt her."

"Already have, Winchester. You're dumber than you look."

"Why are we connected?" Dean asked, ignoring the jibe. "Why did you take her?"

"Isn't it obvious? Can't you tell by the way she won't shut up and glares at anything that breathes?"

Dean just stared at him, confused.

The vampire laughed. "You honestly don't know?" When Dean didn't respond, his laughter multiplied. He guffawed as Sophie continued to bleed out, her head sinking onto her shoulder in exhaustion. "You really don't see it, do you? What's right in front of your eyes? Winchester, she's your daughter. Your own flesh and blood. She's your daughter, and I'm going to kill her, and there's nothing you can do about it."

Dean stared at the vampire like he was crazy. "You're delusional," he spat. "There's no way in hell I have a daughter. You just want revenge, and you'll go to any lengths to get it."

"Oh, but Sophia here is your daughter. And you know what's even better? She knows it. She was in town looking for you. Isn't that right, darling?"

Dean was surprised to see tears begin to leak out of Sophie's eyes. Not that he would've been surprised to see a teenage girl crying in the kind of situation she was in now, but the fact that she hadn't been crying at all until the vampire brought up the topic of him made it suspicious enough. She mumbled something, but it was inaudible. The vampire sighed. "Guess we need to take this off and save us all the trouble." He yanked off he gag and Sophie gasped as she inhaled a breath of air. "Now, Sophia, please tell Mr. Winchester here why you came." She looked like she could barely talk, and Dean was starting to get very worried about all of the blood running down from her neck and shoulder. "I said talk!" The vampire yelled, slapping her across the face.

"Hey!" Dean yelled, taking another step forward. "You hurt her one more time and I kill you, bloodbath or not!"

"You're spouting out nonsense you don't mean," the vampire replied, grinning. "Now, Sophia. Talk."

She opened her mouth, shut it, and then opened it again. "I think... I think I'm your daughter. I guess I could be wrong," she said with exhaustion in her voice. "My mother said my father's name was Dean, and that he traveled a lot. She said he had a brother he always talked about but she never met. She said I h-had his...his eyes." She trailed off, tears falling down her face, her breathing becoming more labored.

The vampire grinned and stroked Sophie's cheek right where he had just hit her. "Come on now, Sophia, tell the good man your mother's name."

Sophie sniffed, trying to reign in her tears. "Caroline. Caroline G-Gardner."

Dean's head snapped up to full attention. Caroline Gardner. But...no...no, there wasn't a chance...

The vampire didn't think so. "Well, what do you know. The lightbulb has finally been lit."

"Let her go," Dean said in a lethal, low voice, a vein of anger pulsing through his body. No matter what the truth was, Sophie was being tortured because of him, and he wasn't about to let anything else happen to her because of him. "Let her go or I swear I will disembowel you and fry you in the sun before I finally chop off your head."

"But we were having so much fun!" the vampire laughed. Dean saw Sam move out of the corner of his eye, and he realized he needed to distract the monster so that Sam could have a clear shot if he could muster the strength.

At that moment, Sophie's head collapsed onto her shoulder, and she was completely unconscious, blood dripping from her nose and the corner of her mouth.

Dean saw the opportunity.

"You killed her!" he exclaimed. "You son of a bitch, you killed her!"

The vampire grinned. "She's not dead. I can hear her heartbeat."

"Check her pulse then."

He shrugged. "If I must."

As the vampire bent to check her pulse, Sam leaped up from the ground, wincing because of a gash on his head, and without even thinking swung his sword at the vampire's neck.

And, like the end of a terrible nightmare, the son of a bitch's head rolled onto the floor and his body collapsed, and just as quickly as he'd blinked he was dead. It was almost too successful to be possible.

Dean stared at the body for a second, as if to assure himself the bastard was dead, and then he looked at Sam. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," he said. "Looks worse than it is."

Dean nodded, and then he stepped towards Sophie. He tried to push everything that had been said to the back of his mind. "Help me get her down," he said.

"We're going to need bolt cutters," Sam pointed out. "Those are solid chains. One second, I'll be right back, I think I saw some on the way in."

As he hurried out of the room, Sophie's eyelids fluttered, and as she tried to lift her head she moaned.

"Hey, hey take it easy," Dean said. "Don't move."

"Where's...where's the...the..."

"He's dead. Don't worry, we're going to get you down."

"Hurts..."

"I know, I know," Dean said, wanting to punch something. "I know, we're going to get you some help okay. Just hold on."

Sam rushed back in, a pair of bolt cutters in his hand. Dean didn't bother to ask where he'd gotten them, and soon Sam was breaking the chains from the ceiling and Sophie collapsed into Dean's outstretched arms with a pained cry.

"It's okay," Dean said. "It's okay, I've gotcha. I've gotcha, you hear? I'm gonna make sure you're safe. You're going to be okay." He lowered her to the ground. "Sam, you've got to get the chains off her wrists and ankles."

"On it," Sam said.

As he set to work, he realized Sophie was shaking, which was when he remembered the bastard had torn off her shirt. Once her shackles were gone, he quickly removed his thick jacket and wrapped it around Sophie's shoulders, trying not to cringe at the idea of his favorite jacket being soaked in blood. Without another word, he lifted the girl up into his arms, alarmed to see she had passed out again. "We've got to get her to a hospital, fast."

"The shortest way back to the car is the way we came, come on," Sam said. Dean clutched Sophie to his chest and quickly followed Sam back out to where they'd parked the car. The sun was just starting to sink in the sky, casting an orange glow across them. It made Sophie's strawberry blonde hair look on fire, and the blood on her body looked about ten shades brighter, crimson red.

"You take her," Dean said as they neared the Impala. "I drive faster than you."

"Alright, hand her over."

Dean gently passed the unconscious Sophie to Sam, whose head gently fell on his chest, and he looked down at her face in consternation. Dean pulled his keys out of his pocket and then looked back at his brother. "Well, damn, Sam, are you going to stare at her all night or are you going to get in the freaking car?"

Sam looked up, clearing his throat. "Sorry, Dean, it's just...she could be my niece. Family."

Dean felt like a lightning bolt hit him, but he just shook his head. "We don't know that. Now c'mon, we've got to go before she bleeds out."

Sam nodded, ducking into the back seat with Sophie in his arms as Dean slid into the driver's seat, cranking the car up and screeching out of the parking lot, going from zero to fifty in no time at all.

As they drove perilously down the street, Sam kept pushing Sophie's hair out of her face and watching as it fell back across her eyes. Dean watched them in the rear view for a moment. "Seriously, dude, that's getting creepy."

"Dean. She could be your daughter. She could be my niece."

"We're not having this discussion."

"She even looks a bit like you," Sam tried again.

"Look, there's no way in hell. Just stop talking, try to keep her warm and put pressure on her neck, and let me get us to a hospital."

Sam looked unwilling to end the conversation, but he kept his mouth shut as Dean sped towards the nearest hospital. They arrived in less than ten minutes, and the moment the car stopped Sam was opening the door and hauling Sophie out. Dean followed them through the entrance to the emergency room and almost immediately they were bombarded by nurses. Clearly, Sophie's condition made her a top priority. In almost a blink of an eye, she was transferred from Sam's arms to a stretcher and before they could do anything she was being wheeled away.


	4. Chapter 4: Night Shift

_Chapter 4: Night Shift_

Sam looked over at Dean, who was watching Sophie as she disappeared behind double doors. "Dude. You okay?"

Dean ripped his eyes away from the scene and back towards his brother. "Yeah. I'm good. We should go."

Sam looked shocked. "Go? Dean...don't you think you should stay?"

"Why? And let this girl think I'm her father? I don't think so."

Sam didn't look convinced. "Is it so crazy to think you could've fathered a child amid all your years of sleeping around?"

"Yes," Dean snapped. "I'm a careful person. Besides, there's no way I have a daughter named Sophie. If I had a daughter she'd have a much more badass name, like Joan or Zelda. I am _not _the father of a Sophie."

Sam rolled his eyes. "I saw your face when she said her mom's name. You knew her, didn't you?"

Dean narrowed his eyes. "Sam, it doesn't matter. Look what happened to her already because of me. Acknowledging that I could actually be her father, that'd paint an even bigger target on her back. How many people and monsters want me dead? How many would love to kill anyone related to me? So no, I'm not staying. She's better off without me."

"Dean—"

"Sam, this isn't up for discussion!" Dean snapped. "C'mon, let's get out of here before nurses start asking questions."

Sam looked like he wanted to protest, but he also seemed to see where Dean was coming from. And while part of him wanted to get to know this girl who might be his blood, he also didn't want her to get hurt anymore. And so he simply left his cell number with a nurse who promised to call and let him know how Sophie was doing, and then the Winchester brothers slid into the Impala and headed to their motel for the night.

* * *

Sam and Dean had finally fallen to sleep after hours of struggling with the events of the night, only to be woken up an hour later by the wailing of Sam's phone.

Dean's loud groan filled the room. "What part of no phones till sunrise don't you understand, Sam!" he yelled into his pillow.

Sam rolled over, his head aching from where Dean had stitched up his forehead. He grabbed his phone to see who was calling. "It's the hospital," he said, his brain clearing a little bit.

Dean's head shot up. "You gave them your number?"

"So I wanted to know if the kid was okay. Sue me." He answered the call. "Hello?"

"Hi, is this Mr. Page?"

"This is he."

"This is Nurse Odom, you gave me your number so I could call you and tell you how the girl you dropped off earlier was doing."

"Yes, of course," Sam said, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. "How is she?"

"She's doing well. She's asleep right now, but she'll make a full recovery. We just had a few questions for you that she hasn't been...willing to answer."

"What's that?"

"Well firstly...her name."

Sam was surprised. "She didn't tell you her name?"

"No. She refused to, actually. Wouldn't break no matter how many times we asked her. She seems scared of something."

"Well, I'd think so. She was just attacked."

"Of course, but generally victims are willing to at least give their names to doctors. She's refusing to."

"Do you know why?" Sam asked.

"She keeps saying that if someone finds out where she is they'll kill her." Sam's eyes narrowed a bit. "Obviously she's very stressed out about what happened and nobody can actually get to her in the hospital, but we were wondering if she gave you her name so we can try to notify the family."

Sam's response was purely reactionary. "I'm sorry, no, she never did tell us her name. My brother and I found her unconscious like that." Dean's head snapped up, and he mouthed _What _in Sam's direction.

The nurse sighed. "Oh well. We'll try to get it out of her. We had some other questions for you, too."

"You know what," Sam said. "Would it be easier for my brother and I to just come in? We'd like to see her again. Guess we just want to see with our own eyes that she's doing better."

"Yes, that'd be perfect," Nurse Odom replied. "Tomorrow morning would be best, I'd rather let her sleep peacefully now."

"Of course, of course," Sam said. "We'll see you tomorrow."

He hung up and looked over at Dean, who was glaring at him. "Dude. What the hell? What part of we're not dragging her into all of this don't you understand?"

"Dean, I think she's already in it," Sam replied apologetically. "She's refusing to give her name to the hospital. She keeps saying someone's trying to find her and kill her."

Dean rubbed his face with his hand. "Damn it."

"We need to get over there," Sam said. "She could be in danger now."

Dean nodded. "Then let's get going."

**Follows, favorites, and especially reviews always appreciated! Thanks! ~ Lacey :)**


	5. Chapter 5: Elusion

_Chapter 5: Elusion_

The hospital entryway was almost entirely empty, barring a few late night drunks walking in with bleeding hands and a couple who'd gotten a little banged up in a car accident. Luckily for the Winchesters, they arrived just as the couple was being ushered in by a host of nurses and paramedics, and they were able to slip past the nurses and make their way through the hallways.

They stumbled upon an orderly, who immediately looked suspicious. "Excuse me," he said. "Are you two allowed to be back here?"

Dean cast a sideways glance at Sam before looking back towards the young man. "Yes, we were told to find the room of the girl who was just brought in here a few hours ago. Nasty bite mark on her neck, stab wound in the shoulder."

The man nodded. "Right, the pretty redhead. She's sleeping right now, I don't think—"

Dean fished around in his pocket and pulled out his fake FBI badge. "I think it's best you show us to her room."

The man took a good look at the badge and then nodded. "Sure thing."

He led them down the hallway and then turned right, striding briskly to the third door on the left. "She's sleeping. I'd advise you to wait till she wakes up. She's been a bit of a wreck."

"Of course," Sam said, nodding. "We'll take it from here."

The orderly nodded, and a few seconds later he was out of sight.

Dean peeked in the window. "There are curtains around her bed," he noted.

"Just open the door, Dean," Sam said, rolling his eyes.

Dean shrugged and opened it, greeted by the smell of antibacterial soap and the sound of a whirring machine. He and Sam slowly approached the curtain, and after taking a breath to calm himself, afraid he'd look at the girl and see his own face staring back at him, he tugged the curtain to the side.

The bed was empty, the oxygen tubes that had no doubt been pumping air into little Sophie's body lying forgotten in the sheets.

"Damn it!" Dean exclaimed, putting a hand to to his pocket where he kept his knife. "We're too late."

"Oh," a small voice said from behind them, and Sam and Dean whirled around to find Sophie standing in the corner of the room, a syringe in her hand as a weapon. She looked terrible; while the blood had been cleaned off her body, her face and arms were covered with bruises, and her lip had been split. Her hair had been taken out of its pigtails and was falling around her head in shiny red-gold waves, her hazel green eyes flashing in fear. "I thought...I thought you were something else."

"Just relax," Sam coaxed. "We're not going to hurt you."

Slowly, Sophie lowered the syringe. "I...I know. I just...I haven't had a very good day." The moment she said that, she swayed on the spot, and just as her knees began to give out Sam lunged forward and grabbed her under the arms.

"Watch yourself," he said, guiding her over to the hospital bed. He sat her down and she breathed deeply, trying to regain control.

"Blood loss sucks," she commented. Then she cringed. "Oh, no, I did not just make a vampire joke." Dean grinned at her, and then the grin fell off of his face when he noticed the thick bandage on her neck.

"How're you doing?" Dean asked, feeling more awkward than he ever had in his life.

She looked up at him, their eerily similar eyes meeting and staring for a moment. He felt like Sophie was trying to figure out everything about him in just a glance. "I've been better," she admitted.

Dean looked at her, his gaze steady.

She looked down at her feet. "I guess there's...there's some sort of conversation we have to have..."

"We can have it later," Dean said. "First you need to tell us who you think is trying to kill you."

She looked shocked. "How do you—"

"The nurse," Sam interjected. "Hurry, we don't want to stick around if there are monsters on your tail."

"I don't know who wants me dead," she said nervously. "I just know someone does."

"How?" Sam pressed.

"Sebastian—"

"Sebastian?" Dean asked.

"The vampire that kidnapped me," she clarified. "He left for a moment before you two came, when I was chained up, and when he came back he told me that he'd told every monster he knew of what my name was and...and whose kid I'm supposed to be." Her eyes shifted to Dean for a moment, and then went back to Sam. "Whether or not any of that's true, I guess a lot of people hate you or something, because from what he said I should expect a lot of things to come after me."

Dean ran a hand down his face. "Unfortunately for you, he wasn't lying. We need to get you out of here, pronto."

"Okay. Let me get my clothes," she said, bracing herself to stand up.

"Let me," Sam said, gently placing a hand on her shoulder and pushing her back down. "Where are they?"

"I...I don't know..."

"Well, we don't have time for this," Dean said hastily, pulling off his jacket and tossing it to Sophie. "Put this on, we'll get you out of here, and then we'll find some more clothes for you later."

She nodded, sliding on his jacket over her hospital gown, wearing it like a giant brown dress. She was grateful she wasn't wearing one of those hospital gowns from the movies, with a giant slit down the back. All the same, though, the hospital was bitterly cold, and she was grateful for the jacket, even if it did smell like whiskey, Old Spice, and a hint of the coppery scent of blood, likely her own. She glanced at Dean, and he wondered why she kept looking at him with such an inquisitive stare, as if no matter how long she looked she'd never know him. Which was true, he supposed, but how could she know.

"Alright," Sam said. "Dean, you're going to have to help her out of here, I'm too tall for her to put her arm around. I'll cover you."

Dean nodded, stepping forward and offering his hand out. Sophie hesitated for only a brief moment before reaching out her small, cold hand and grasping his. He gently pulled her up and slid her arm around his neck, reaching down and placing an arm around her waist to hold her up. The movement in her arm caused a horrible throbbing pain in her shoulder where Sebastian had stabbed her, and she let out a little cry of pain before biting her lip to hold the rest in.

Dean looked down at her. "You okay?"

She nodded. "Yeah," she said. "Just...I hope you have painkillers wherever we're going."

"That is one thing we are fully stocked on," he assured her. Sam pulled a gun out from the back of his pants, and Dean added, "You good to walk?"

She looked up at him, a glare in her eyes. "He was sucking blood out of my neck, not my feet," she snapped. "I'm fine. Let's just get out of here before something that's not supposed to exist tries to kill me again."

Dean had been so busy trying to save her that he'd forgotten how her world had just been shattered. She'd been taken by a vampire, for God's sake. She had to be thinking she was losing her mind. If possible, the guilt weighed heavier on his chest. "Nothing's killing you today," he assured her. "Sam, let's go."

He didn't need telling twice. They walked out of the door of the room and started down the hall, looking for an emergency exit or side door. After two or so minutes of searching, they finally found one, and right as they were making their way through it someone called after them. "Hey! What the hell are you doing with my patient?"

All three of their heads swiveled to see the orderly Sam and Dean had run into earlier coming down the hallway towards them. As he neared, Dean saw his eyes flash black for a moment. "Demon, Sam," he said.

"Demon?" Sophie repeated, terrified.

"Demon," Dean affirmed. "We need to get the hell out of here."

"I'm sorry, did you just say _demon?"_ Sophie exclaimed. "As in, spawn-of-Satan demon?"

"No time to explain, kiddo," Dean said, pushing her through the door despite her surprised, pained cry. Sam followed through and Dean slammed the door, locking it tight. "Can you run?" he asked, looking to Sophie. She bit her lip and shook her head apologetically. "It's fine," he said, almost reassuring himself. "Thank God you're light." Without any warning, he lifted her back up in his arms and she let out a gasp. "Alright, we're running for it. Sam, you run ahead, see if you can get to the car and get it started."

Sam nodded and sprinted ahead, and Dean set off at a run behind him. Despite the agonizing pain rippling through her neck and shoulder, Sophie locked her arms around Dean's neck and tried to come to grips with the fact that she was running away from a demon in the arms her alleged father.

Soon Dean heard the rumbling of his car, and barely a second later the Impala roared to life in front of them. It sped in their direction and then skidded to a stop, and Dean quickly dumped Sophie in the backseat before shutting the door and sliding in by Sam, who proceeded to slam on the accelerator and flee towards the nearest exit.

**Thanks everyone so much for the reviews, favorites, and follows! Keep 'em coming ;) Thanks for reading! ~ Lacey :)**


	6. Chapter 6: Daughter Or Not

_Chapter 6: Daughter Or Not_

"What the hell is happening?" Sophie exclaimed.

"A bit busy right now," Dean called back, and after a few terrifying moments of going well over fifty miles and hour in a parking garage, they were out on the road, hightailing it to God knows where. "Okay. I think we're in the clear."

"In the clear from what?" Sophie asked breathlessly, her face drained of blood.

"A demon. From Hell," Sam said.

"A demon from Hell?" Sophie repeated. "Hell's real?"

"Very," Dean remarked, attempting to mask the chill that ran up his spine just from thinking about Hell.

"Vampires, demons...what else?" she breathed, sounding like she was about to faint.

"Everything, basically," Dean said. "And I guess everything's coming after you, now."

"Because I'm supposedly your daughter," she deadpanned. "Great. I don't even know you and I'm going to die because of you."

Dean felt like she'd slapped him. "No," he snapped, making the turn onto the Interstate. "No, you're not dying, got it?"

"Yeah, sure," Sophie replied, clearly not convinced.

"I'm serious. I'm not letting anything else get to you because some asshole vampire decided to tack my last name onto you."

"He didn't just decide to tack your name onto mine," Sophie grumbled, sitting back in the seat, gingerly rubbing her shoulder and poked at a stitch that had come out. "He picked me for a reason."

"We agreed to have this conversation later," Dean said, directing his eyes back to the road.

"Now is later," Sophie retorted. "For all I know I could be dead before we get to talk."

"I just told you—"

"Humor me," Sophie snapped.

"What do you want me to say, kid? One vampire says I've got a long lost daughter and I'm supposed to believe him?" Dean exclaimed.

"Dean," Sam cautioned. "Chill out. She's had a long day. She's about one more supernatural encounter away from going into shock."

"No," she said, her hazel green eyes flashing. "We're finally getting somewhere. You might think this is frustrating, _Dean_, but it's nothing compared to how this is for me! Do you think I enjoy having my father's identity dangled in front of me without any sign the information is at all credible, and then being tortured because of it? I've been trying to find you—him—for years! And now...now this...this nightmare..." Her face contorted for just a moment before she hid herself in her hands, shaking uncontrollably.

"Damn it," Sam said, looking back. "Definitely going into shock."

She lifted her head up and shook it. "No. Not shock. Just...I'm just frustrated. And exhausted. Are we going anywhere where I'll be able to sleep?"

Her sudden change of mood worried Dean, but he didn't comment on it. "We should be there in ten minutes."

She nodded and then put her head in her hands. She still trembling as if it were below freezing, despite Dean's jacket. Sam looked over at Dean, a worried look on his face, but Dean just shook his head. This wasn't the kind of problem you could solve by a quick _Are you alright._

After a few moments she lifted her head up. "Um...Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"We're going to get some clothes for me, right? Because, uh...I only have a hospital gown. And your jacket. Which, by the way, could use a good wash."

Dean ignored the sideways insult at his favorite piece of outerwear. He turned to Sam. "What do you say, Sammy? Think we lost the demon?"

"I think so," Sam said. "Besides, she's right. She can't walk around in that flimsy paper dress, it's October. She'll freeze."

"Alright, then," Dean ceded. "Where do we get clothes for you, kid?"

"I don't know," Sophie said. "I don't care. Just send me into a store and I can make it happen."

"You can't even walk," Sam said.

"I can make it around long enough to get a few items of clothing," Sophie said. "Besides, you don't know what size clothes I wear or anything."

"Sure I do," Dean said. "I'm guessing size 2 pants, extra small shirts, 32B—"

"_Dean,_" Sam exclaimed.

"How do you—" Sophie started at the same time.

"What can I say, I have an eye for things like that."

Sam looked relatively disturbed. "Dean, she literally could be your daughter and you just eyeballed the size of her bra," Sam hissed under his breath.

"It was a simple mental measurement," Dean muttered back.

"Look, regardless of your...creepy ability to know the exact size of my clothes...I still can walk into a store," Sophie said. "If you really think we're in the clear of this demon, just stop by any old store and I'll be in and out in ten minutes. I have a bank account, too, so I don't need your money."

"Alright, fine," Dean said.

"But you can take our cash," Sam said, to Dean's incredulous dismay. "No point alerting anyone watching that you're accessing your bank account in the city you're in."

She nodded. "Thanks."

"It's the least we can do," Sam replied. He turned and offered her a little half grin, and she tried to return it, the corners of her mouth twitching upwards before flattening out again.

Three minutes later they found a quaint little thrift store wedged between a small pet shop and a hole in the wall coffee shop. Once the car was parked, Sophie slowly slid out of the backseat and gingerly limped up to Dean's window. He rolled it down and handed her a wad of cash. "Frugality is key," he said as her hand clamped around it. "And don't let anyone get a good look at you. Sam'll go in just to keep an eye out."

She nodded, trying to fold his jacket more tightly around her body. Dean couldn't help but stare at her in her pitiful state. The bottom of her hospital gown peaked out from the end of Dean's jacket, which hung almost as long on her body as the gown. She was barefoot, and her hair was hanging in wild, wavy curls around her face, framing her bruised cheeks and split lip. She saw him staring at her and bit the inside of her cheek. "I'll be right out," she said, and then she turned on her heel and slowly made her way into the store, Sam close behind her.

Sophie was true to her word. Within ten minutes she left wearing a pair of dark, skin tight jeans, a gray tank top, an army green jacket similar to the one she'd had earlier, and a pair of gently used combat-styled boots. In her arms she carried a few other articles of clothing, which she figured she would need in the future, and an unremarkable gray duffle to hold it all. The lady at the checkout had given her a few things for free when she'd gone up to pay, perhaps because she felt so bad about how terrible Sophie looked. Among those free items had been a package of hairbands, a belt, a mini-brush, a set of pajamas, and a cream colored beanie.

Sam met up with her at the exit, hands in his pockets. "Did you get everything you need?"

She slapped a bill in his hands. "With twenty dollars to spare."

He grinned. "That'll make Dean happy. More beer for him."

"He drinks?" she asked as they slowly made their way back to the Impala, Sophie still a little unsteady on her feet.

Sam nearly snorted. "More than anyone should."

"Hm," Sophie mused.

"Don't worry," Sam said. "He never gets drunk on the job. Actually, I don't even think there's enough alcohol in the world to actually get him drunk anymore."

"Well, that's good, I guess. If he's the way he is sober, I can't even imagine how he'd be drunk."

Sam stared at her for a moment, wanting to peg her with questions about what she was thinking and how she was feeling, and then he realized there was no way he'd be able to get anything real out of her until she'd had some rest. "C'mon," he said. "Dean's waiting."

He walked off toward the car and Sophie slowly followed behind him. She heard the hum of the engine as she slid into the back seat, tossing the duffle on the seat next to her.

"Glad to see you in something other than that hospital gown," Dean noted, backing out of the parking spot. "You got my jacket still?"

"Yeah," she said, patting the duffle. "In here." She reached in and pulled out his jacket, tossing it up into the front seat, and then she reached in and grabbed one of the hair ties the lady had given her. As she reached up to tie her hair back, she felt a sharp pain in her shoulder, and then she gasped.

"What is it?" Sam asked, turning back to look at her in concern.

"Nothing," she said. "I just think...I think one or two of my stitches might have come undone in all of this craziness."

"Well, you happen to be traveling with the two best on-the-go-suture experts in the country," Dean commented, acting nonchalant but adding a bit more force to the accelerator. "You're in good hands."

"Good to know," she sighed.

She sat in silence during their drive to the nearest crappy motel, mulling through everything that had happened throughout the day. She didn't know how she was even still conscious. All she wanted was to fall asleep and wake back up about ten years earlier, with her mom and her puppy Olly. Impossible, though, since both of them were dead.

Within twenty minutes they were bringing all of their belongings into a tiny, dingy motel room off of the highway, Dean carrying his and Sophie's bags as she tiredly shuffled into the room. There were two beds, a lumpy looking couch, and a small, disgusting kitchenette that Sophie wouldn't cook on if there were no other kitchens left on earth. She practically collapsed on the couch as Sam and Dean dumped their bags onto the floor. Dean turned to look at her.

"Alright, show me the wound. We'll fix those stitches up." Too tired to argue, she removed her jacket and turned around so Dean had access to her shoulder. He inspected it for a minute, and then bent away. "Looks like two of the stitches were busted. Sam, you're the doctor in the group, what say you?"

Sam walked over and looked at it. "Yeah, that's going to need to be restitched."

"We can't go back to another hospital," Sophie said, her voice a little bit higher. "They're probably at every medical center in the area."

"She's right," Sam said. "Sophie...I think we're going to have to restitch it the old fashioned way."

"What?" Dean exclaimed. "Sam, it's one thing to bite the bullet and dump some whiskey on our wounds, but she's fifteen. Medieval medical care shouldn't be practiced on a person until they're at least legal."

"Dean, it's okay," Sophie said, grimacing as she moved her shoulder. "Just get it over with. I'm not going back to a hospital, and I'm bleeding out. Pain is relative, anyway, and I've felt worse."

"Kid, I don't think you know how much it hurts to put in stitches without numbing it up first," Dean cautioned.

"There's a first time for everything," Sophie said, standing up and walking over to Dean's bag. She tossed it onto one of the beds and unzipped it.

"Hey, get out of my stuff," Dean said, hurrying over and snatching his bag back, but not before she'd pulled out the bottle of alcohol stuffed in the sides.

"Figured I'd find something in here," she noted, popping the top off and taking a quick drink. Her face contorted in disgust as she swallowed. "Ugh, how can you stand this stuff?"

"What the hell are you doing?" Dean asked angrily.

"I believe the term is self-medicating. Get enough of this in my system, and I won't even remember the pain."

"I am _not _allowing a fifteen-year-old to get drunk like this. No way," Dean said, shaking his head. "Not happening."

"Look," Sophie said. "I don't like this anymore than you do. In fact, I guarantee you I like it the least. I have had the worst day ever. I've been fed on by a vampire, skewered in the shoulder by said vampire, been told you're my father and that monsters are actually real, all in under twelve hours. Nothing, not even the world's most painful stitches, could make this day worse. So let me take about three more gulps of this crap, and then Sam here can start sewing me back together, alright?"

Dean and Sam looked at each other. Dean finally shrugged. "Fine. Have it your way."

Sophie nodded, taking another long gulp of the alcohol, swallowing it, and then taking another. "God this is awful," she said, brushing her hand across her mouth. She handed the bottle to Sam. "Alright. Fix me up, please."

Sam got to work as Dean looked on. Sophie grimaced and clenched her teeth the first time the needle passed through her skin, but she didn't make a noise. Sam kept looking over at her face for signs that the pain was too much, but she just slid her hair over to one side and grabbed the edge of the couch so hard that her fingers were turning white. Dean watched as the blood dripped down her back, staining the new shirt she had on.

This was his fault.

The kidnapping, the torture, the monsters chasing her. The fact that she was receiving homemade stitches in the worst motel the city had to offer. It was all his fault.

He didn't know a lot about what was happening, but looking at Sophie now, her face contorted in silent pain, he did know one thing.

Daughter or not, he was going to make damn sure that from here on out, she was safe.

No matter what that meant.

**Gracias for reading! I'll be keeping it coming! Got a lot more to come! ~ Lacey :)**


	7. Chapter 7: Chick Flick Moment

_Chapter 7: Chick Flick Moment_

Finally, Sam was done. "Alright," he said, wiping his bloodied hands on a towel. "That should do it." He taped some gauze on top of the stitches, walked over to their crappy fridge, and placed some ice in the paper bag the liquor had come out of. He also pulled a bottle of painkillers out of his pocket. "Keep this on your shoulder until you fall asleep to help with the pain and the swelling, and take a couple of these."

Sophie quickly took the bottle and popped it open. "How many should I take?"

"I think for your height and weight, it recommends two," Sam said.

"Gotcha." She quickly dumped four into her hand and threw them all into her mouth. After swallowing them, she stood up and grabbed her duffle, quickly taking out her pajamas. "There's a working shower in here, right?"

Dean nodded. "It should work. But be careful not to get those stitches wet."

"I'll do my best," she said, and then she disappeared into the bathroom.

Dean let out a pent up breath, one he didn't even realized had built up inside of him, and then he sat down on the edge of the bed.

Sam looked over at him. "You alright?"

"I don't know, man," Dean said. "Would you be?"

"Probably not," Sam admitted. "But talk to me. Is there a chance she's yours? I saw your reaction when she said her mother's name. Did you know her?"

Dean heard the water turn on in the bathroom, and he waited a few moments before nodding. "Yeah. Caroline Gardner. I met her before you even went to Stanford," Dean said. "I was, like...what, seventeen, eighteen? We were hunting some werewolves, and she was the daughter of the police chief. We ended up staying in town for, like, two months."

"I remember that trip. One of those longest we had."

"Yeah. Well, all those times I said I was going to hustle pool, I was meeting Caroline. Seriously, one of the hottest girls I've ever seen. Really pretty redhead with these big brown eyes and, well, she had these legs and I swear she was a gymnast—"

"Alright, Romeo, keep it PG please. Her daughter's literally in the next room. So what happened?"

"What always happened," Dean said, shrugging. "We killed the werewolves, found a new gig, and skipped town. Never saw her again."

"But you cared about her," Sam said. "You wouldn't sneak around with her for two months if you didn't."

"So I was a little more attached to her than others," Dean accepted. "I was also a teenager. It was easier for me to fall into some sort of relationship. Didn't stop me from leaving all the same."

"So if you were sleeping with her for two months," Sam said, "it's pretty possible you might have slipped one past the goalie."

"Man, I don't know," Dean said, rubbing his face with his hands. "We were careful."

"Careful doesn't always cut it."

"So what if it's possible she's mine. Doesn't mean I can, should, or will make any claims on her. Damn it Sam, she's known me for less than twenty-four hours and she barely survived that long. And she's been just fine without me for fifteen years. Why ruin that now?"

"You should at least check and make sure you're really her father. It might be easier if there's some clarity," Sam advised.

Dean looked at him like he was crazy. "Are you stupid, Sam? We need to find a place where she's safe, drop her off there, and then get the hell out of dodge."

"How do you think she's going to take that?" Sam tried.

Dean stood up, angry. "I don't know, but I do know how it'll go if she stays with us. She will die. It's as simple as that."

"How can you know that, Dean?" Sam asked, exasperated. "She's probably better with us around to watch her back—"

"Mom, Dad," Dean spat. "Ellen, Jo, Bobby. I could go on for days, Sam, _days_. She will die, and it will probably be very, very painful. So no, she's not better with us around, even if she is half me."

Sam stared at him. "You're probably right—"

"Damn straight."

"But," Sam continued, "you owe it to her to at least prove or disprove you're her father. That way she won't go try anything stupid to figure it out on her own."

Dean was silent for a moment. Sam had a point. "So what do you propose I do, Maury?"

"I don't know. Go find someone who will do a quiet DNA test."

"Yeah, okay, let me pull up the paternity test expert I keep on speed dial," Dean snapped scathingly.

"Look, we'll find someone. Until then, let's just make sure Sophie doesn't get hurt anymore."

"That's as good a plan as any."

Sam walked over to the little cooler they'd brought in and pulled out a beer. He tossed it to Dean and then pulled out another for himself. They both opened their respective bottles and drank at the same time. Sam placed it on the little table set up in the kitchen and sat down in the chair, looking over at his brother. "Dean?" he said tentatively.

"Yeah?" Dean responded, throwing back about half of the bottle of beer in one go.

"I don't know if it counts for anything…but I think she really is yours." Dean looked over at Sam, his face lined with exhaustion. "I mean, she kinda looks like you. Except her hair is sort of reddish and she's a little paler, but the eyes are the same, and the freckles and the nose."

"You've been staring at me too much, Sammy," Dean remarked. After a moment's thought, and another sip of beer, he added, "And at her."

"Says the dude who was able to eyeball a teenager's bra size," Sam pointed out.

"Touché," Dean said, lifting his beer in salute and then drinking again.

"I still think that's sick," Sam commented.

Dean shrugged. "Old habits die hard."

Sam shook his head. "Fatherhood's going to be a doozy for you."

Dean narrowed his eyes angrily. "We just went over this, Sam. I'm not going to be participating in fatherhood. I'm going to be participating in saving this girl's ass because I got her into this mess in the first place."

"Alright, alright, chill out," Sam said. "I'm not saying you need to drop everything and start a whole new life, but…c'mon Dean, I know a part of you always wanted kids."

"Yeah," Dean snorted. "Finding out I knocked up a girl back when I was a teenager and not knowing until the kid's old enough to drive is definitely the way I wanted that to happen."

"Since when has anything ever happened the way we wanted?" Sam pointed out. "I say you roll with the punches. You might end up liking her."

"It's not a matter of me liking her, Sam!" Dean exclaimed. "What part of I-don't-want-to-get-her-killed don't you understand?"

"Just forget about it," Sam responded. "We can duke it out later. She'll be out of the shower in a few minutes, we don't want to look like we're arguing when she comes out."

"Already out," a voice came from behind them, and Sophie stood in the bathroom doorway, wearing pink and yellow plaid pajama pants and a long sleeved black shirt, her hair tied up in a towel. "What are you arguing about?"

"Nothing," the brothers said at the same time.

She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. "Is it about me?"

"It's not important," Sam tried.

"Why do I feel like it is and you're just lying to me?" she asked.

"It's really not," Dean interjected. "Kind of a chick flick moment."

"Great," she sighed, walking over to her bag and unwrapping the towel from her head. Her damp, reddish hair fell in wet curls to just past her shoulder blades. "I get stuck with the two macho monster killers that also need long walks on the beach and tissues. Just my luck."

"Hey," Dean snapped. "We don't need tissues."

"Good to know," she retorted before grabbing a small brush out of her bag and beginning to comb through her hair. "So I guess if you're not going to tell me what you were arguing about, you should at least tell me where you're taking me."

"We…uh….," Dean started, and then he paused.

"We haven't quite figured that out yet," Sam explained.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Sophie asked.

"You can't go back home," Dean explained. "You'd be putting a target on your family's heads."

"I have no family," Sophie said quietly. "There's no problem there."

Sam gave her a strange look. "You have a stepdad, don't you? That's what the missing persons report said."

"You looked up my missing person's report?" Sophie asked, surprised.

"We had to figure out who you were," Dean said.

"Oh," she said. "I didn't even know…I didn't even know I had one."

"It said your friend Patrick reported you missing," Sam tried.

"Oh, Patrick," Sophie exclaimed, slapping a palm to her forehead. "I didn't think about him."

"Or your stepfather, apparently," Dean noted.

"I don't really care about him," Sophie said curtly, dropping the hairbrush back into the duffle bag. She turned away from Sam and Dean, grabbed her hair ties off of her wrist, and began to braid her hair down the side of her head.

"Why not?" Sam prompted after it became clear she wasn't going to elaborate.

"We aren't close," she replied shortly.

"So you don't care if he gets ripped to shreds by an army of supernatural monsters?" Dean asked, sounding surprised.

She didn't respond, trying to phrase her words in just the right way. "I wouldn't wish that upon anyone. I never said I wanted him to die, I just said I'm not close with him. He's not really family, that's what I was trying to get at."

"Well, regardless of how you feel, everything coming after you isn't going to know that man isn't family to you. They'll hunt him down," Dean said.

A look of horror dawned on her face. "Do you think they'll hunt down Patrick? He's the only real friend that I have."

"If they smell leverage, they'll use it," Dean said slowly.

"We have to go get him then," Sophie said, fear building in her voice. "Patrick can't get hurt because of me. He's the only person I care about anymore."

"No can do, sweetheart. You're the one in real danger here."

"Real danger?" she exclaimed, and Dean realized how ridiculous he felt being scolded by a ninety-some pound girl in pink and yellow pajamas. "I have two monster hunters who've decided to protect me for some reason, and he has nothing or no one. So who's facing the real danger now?"

"Look, Sophie," Sam tried. "We want to help Patrick, we do, but our main concern right now is you, and—"

"Why?" she challenged. "Because I may or may not be Dean's daughter? I might have just as much of an abandonment complex as the next fatherless teenage girl, but I'm not naïve enough to think you actually feel some sort of obligation towards me. I'm not your main concern. I get the feeling your job is saving people, and Patrick counts as people. If you don't agree to go make sure he's safe, I'll go myself and then we'll both get killed and you will have failed big time."

Dean looked at Sam, clearly frustrated. Sam gave him a look that clearly asked, _Are you sure she's not yours_?

Dean looked back at Sophie, with her sopping hair and bruised face. She'd been through enough hell today. They could argue later. "Right now there's nothing we can do anyway. We're all exhausted, especially you. You need to sleep."

"But Patrick—"

"At this point, a few hours one way or another won't make any difference. If they already have him, he's done for. If they don't, they wouldn't make the connection between you two for a while. We've got time, and we all need to rest."

Sophie didn't look happy about it, but she nodded. "Fine." She grabbed her bag off of the couch and tossed it onto the floor and then made her way to the closet, opened it up, grabbed the extra set of sheets sitting on the top shelf, and then set them on the couch.

Sam immediately stepped forward and grabbed them. "You go ahead and take one of the beds," he said.

She shook her head. "It's fine, really, I just need to find a pillow and—"

"Nope. What kind of person would I be if I let the girl who just took a beating from a vampire sleep on a lumpy couch while I lounged in an actual bed?"

"You'd be Dean, I guess," Sophie said, looking over at Dean, who had already flopped onto the nearest bed.

"It's been a rough day," Dean defended. "Sammy can take one for the team."

Sophie couldn't help but grin as she made her way over to Dean's bed, leaned over his exhausted body, and grabbed the other pillow off of the bed.

"Hey!" Dean protested.

"No complaining," she said, tossing the pillow onto the couch. "Sam got knocked out by a vampire. He deserves it more."

"If he let himself get knocked out by one of those bastards, I'd say he deserves it _less_," Dean grumbled.

Sophie ignored him as Sam grinned, clearly glad to be shown some favoritism. "Thanks, Sophie," he said brightly.

"Don't mention it," Sophie replied before walking over to her bed and slipping underneath the covers. "Wake me up early. We need to get to Patrick before something else does."

"Stop stressing," Dean said. "Go to sleep."

"Fine," Sophie said, wanting to say something else but already feeling her consciousness slipping away. She closed her eyes, let her head sink into the pillow, and within a minute her breathing had slowed down and she was asleep.

**As always, thanks for reading! Updates forthcoming! Favorite, follow, and please, review! ~ Lacey :)**


	8. Chapter 8: On The Rack

_Chapter 8: On The Rack_

Dean looked over at Sophie, who was deeply asleep under the gaudy orange hotel sheets. "That was quick," he noted.

"She's been on hyperdrive the whole day," Sam rationalized. "She hasn't been able to rest one bit because there hasn't been a moment where she's been safe."

"Well," Dean said, getting up from the bed and grabbing a bag of salt from one of their bags, walking over to the front door, "she's safe now."

Sam looked at the pillow Sophie had nabbed for him, and then he went to the same bag from which Dean had drawn the salt and searched for a can of spray paint. He walked over to the door and began to spray a devil's trap on the floor, a few inches from Dean's salt line. "She's safe _for _now," he corrected as he finished up the trap.

Dean nodded as he moved to salt the one window in the room. "What do you say we do with her after we make sure her friend and her stepdad are alright?

"I don't know," Sam said. "Take a leaf from Frank Deveraux's book? Find a way to give her an entirely new identity, drop her at an obscure city at an obscure school with an obscure foster family. I'm sure Bobby's got a friend somewhere in his book who'd be willing to take in a young girl until she's old enough to get along on her own."

"That," Dean said as he dropped the salt back into his bag, "is a much better idea than mine, even though I don't like it."

"And what was your bright idea?"

"Summon Crowley. See if there was anything he might want in exchange for calling off his demon herd."

Sam gave Dean a look. "Pretty sure any idea is better than that one. Since when has dealing with Crowley done us any favors? Besides, it's not just demons on her tail. It's all kinds of monsters."

"Well yeah, but demons are the only ones who can follow her trail. Everything else, if we could get her far enough away from ground zero…she wouldn't have to start an entirely new life."

"Look, we're both exhausted," Sam pointed out. "We should go to sleep and figure this stuff out later."

Dean nodded. "I'd argue, but I'm too damn tired, too." He walked over to his bed, grabbed at the bottom of his shirt, looked over his shoulder at the sleeping Sophie, and then stopped. "I have to sleep fully clothed now, don't I?"

Sam grinned. "Probably a good idea."

He grumbled, tugging off his jacket and leaving his undershirt on. He climbed into his bed and went to turn off the light before hesitating again. "Are two grown men allowed to be alone in a room with no lights with a teenage girl? Should we leave a light on or something?"

"Dean, stuff like that only applies to men who _intend _on being pedophiles. Now I can't speak for you, but that's not me."

"Point taken," Dean said, turning off the lamp.

Within ten minutes, they were all deeply asleep.

* * *

Dean dreamed of blood.

Ever since his little gallivant to Hell, he'd had nightmares on an almost nightly basis, so this blood-filled dream didn't throw him off his guard at first. He'd seen and done things down in the pit that he could never unsee or undo, no matter how much he wished he could. It almost seemed right for him to experience these nightmares. In his mind, no amount of suffering could really make up for the things he'd done to some of the souls in Hell.

In his nightmare, he was back in the pit, and he was torturing some woman on the rack. She screamed and begged him to stop, but he just kept going, stone-faced, cutting into her flesh remorselessly.

Suddenly, her screams and yells began to change. They sounded different, like they were coming from a different person. He refocused, and as he pulled a serrated knife out from the girl's ribs he realized she had changed. The woman before had had dark black hair and sullen brown eyes. This girl was small, with light golden red hair and green eyes, and her screams were filled with a new pain. "Dean, please," she cried out. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! What did I do? I'm sorry!"

In shock, he dropped the knife. "Sophie?"

It was like she hadn't heard him, and she kept screaming. "I'm sorry!"

He stepped away from her, eyes wide with shock. "I didn't…I didn't mean to…"

She bled out, her bloodied face filled with insurmountable pain. "Why, Dean?" she whimpered. "Why me?"

He sat up in bed, eyes wide, panting and sweating. It was still pitch black, with just the faint glow of the moon coming through the window. He looked over on the couch and saw Sam, passed out, his long limbs tangled in the blankets. He then looked over to the other bed, where Sophie was curled up in a small ball underneath the blankets, which moved up and down slowly and rhythmically with each breath she took. She was fine. She'd probably wake up cranky and sore, but she was fine.

Dean slowly let his head fall back on the pillow, and he closed his eyes, trying to let the image of sleeping Sophie pervade his mind instead of the image of tortured Sophie, hung up on a rack in Hell. After a few moments of focusing on her in her most peaceful state, he was finally able to calm his heart rate, and slowly, he fell back asleep.

**More action and dad-ness coming up in the next couple of chapter! Thanks, as always! Favorite, follow, review! ~ Lacey :)**


	9. Chapter 9: Wake Up Call

_Chapter 9: Wake Up Call_

What felt like just seconds later, Dean was jarred awake by someone pushing at his shoulder.

He started awake, flailing wildly. "Where is it? I'll kill it with my hands."

"Woah," a small voice cautioned. "Chill out. I'm just waking you up."

He let his vision go into focus, and he saw Sophie standing over him, her arms crossed. He looked over to the alarm clock and saw a bright green flashing _6:00_. "What the hell?" he grumbled. "It's not even sunrise."

"We agreed to leave early," she said. "To go check on Patrick."

"And your stepfather," he said, remembering.

"Right."

Dean sat up, noticing that Sam was gone. "Where's Sam?"

"He went to go get coffee and gas. He made a lot less of a fuss when I tried to wake him up."

"How long have you been up for?" Dean asked, sitting up and swinging his feet over the side of the bed.

"Since five. I didn't sleep for very long, to be honest. I kept rolling over onto my shoulder and waking up."

"Sorry to hear that."

She shrugged. "I can sleep when I'm dead. Now c'mon, put some pep in that step."

"Look, I told you last night. A few hours one way or the other isn't going to make a difference," he complained, but still he stood up from the bed and straightened out his shirt.

Sophie glared at him, hands on her hips. "If it were Sam about to be hunted by a world of creepy-crawlies, we'd have been there last night."

Dean looked carefully at Sophie before walking over to his bag and grabbing out a toothbrush. "Yeah, probably," he admitted. "But not if it would have put you in danger."

"No," she shook her head. "You still would have gone."

Dean walked over to the bathroom. "Yes, but you would have been far, far away."

Sophie didn't look too happy about that. "So, what, now I'm a burden _and _useless?"

"I never said either of those!" Dean exclaimed, beginning to get frustrated.

"It was implied."

Dean ran his toothbrush underwater and squeezed some toothpaste onto it. "Are you always like this, or is it the painkillers talking?"

"Am I always really pissed off because the stranger whose hotel room I'm crashing in thinks I'd be useless in saving my best friend from a horde of angry monsters?" he heard her snap as he quickly swiped the brush back and forth carelessly across his teeth. "Sorry, can't say I have a lot of experience in that area. Try me the next time it happens and I'll tell you whether it's just me or the Advil."

He spit and rinsed his mouth. "You could be a little grateful, you know," he snapped back. "You'd be dead right now if Sam and I hadn't saved you. Or worse."

She was silent for a moment, and then she said, her tone changed, "I guess I should've thanked you for that," she admitted. "Not to say that everything that's happened afterwards hasn't sucked, but…I'm glad I'm alive."

"Good," Dean said, taking the biting edge out of his tone. He rinsed off his toothbrush and walked outside of the bathroom. "Now let me get ready and we'll leave when Sam gets back."

She nodded. "I'll just be in here," she said, grabbing her duffle bag and heading into the bathroom.

"No, you'll be out here," Dean said. "You hogged the shower last night."

She stuck her head out, giving him a death glare. "Sorry to be an inconvenience, I wanted to make sure all of my dry blood was washed off my body. I'll be sure to put your comfort over my sanity the next time we decide who gets the most shower time."

"Stop whining and let me in there," Dean grumbled, suddenly understanding what it must feel like to be on the receiving end of someone so mouthy.

Sophie was grumbling too as she stepped out of the bathroom, motioning with her arms towards the tiny little room. "By all means," she said mockingly. He gave her a look and walked into the bathroom, shutting the door and locking it.

He listened to the sound of the mattress creaking as Sophie undoubtedly plopped down on it, and then he turned on the shower and undressed. Once the water was hot, he stepped in, letting the water hit his head and run down his sore back. He hadn't had much time to rest his body since tracking and killing that nest of vamps, but it was starting to catch up with him. Slowly, he began to relax as he settled into the rhythm of the water beating down on his back and running down his body, rinsing away the sweat and grime and stress of the last couple of days.

And then he heard a terrified scream come from the room, and just like he'd never relaxed, every one of his nerves were on fire again.

_Sophie_.

He jumped out of the shower, wrapping a towel around his waist at record speed. "Sophie?" he yelled out, not knowing how the hell he was going to protect Sophie or himself half naked and weaponless. Trying not to think too hard about his helplessness, he burst through the door into the hotel room, determined to fight tooth and nail.

Sophie was standing in the corner, holding the lamp that had been sitting on the bedside table like a baseball bat, a look of disbelief and terror on her face.

Standing across from her was a dark-haired man wearing a blue tie and a trench coat.

**Who ever could it be ;) Thanks as always for reading. Follow, favorite, and feedback is always helpful! ~ Lacey :)**


	10. Chapter 10: This Is The World

_Chapter 10: This Is The World_

Dean swore, his adrenaline production gradually slowing to a stop. "Damn it, Cas! You can't do that!"

The man looked confused. "But, Dean, I always do that."

Sophie looked over at Dean, clearly less shocked about his state of undress than the fact that he seemed to know this strange, trench-coated apparition. "You and the dude who just…literally appeared out of freaking nowhere seem pretty chummy," she said, lowering the lamp slowly and setting it back down on the bedside table. "Care to explain who the hell he is?"

Dean was lost for words. How did he explain what Cas was to her without confusing her already rapidly changing view of the world? "Um…"

"I am Castiel, an angel of the Lord," Cas announced, staring at Sophie intently. He then looked at Dean with a harsh, judgmental glare. "She's just a child, Dean. Do you have no discretion?"

Sophie scrunched up her nose in disgust as Dean grew visibly frustrated. "No, Cas, she's not a hooker, she's…well, she's….she's…"

"Dean and Sam saved me from a vampire. And then from a demon. And they're currently trying to save me from a hoard of angry monsters," Sophie cut in. "I'm sorry, I don't think I heard you correctly. Did you say you were an angel?"

"Correct," Cas said. He turned to give Dean an apologetic glance. "Sorry, Dean, I just figured with you being in a motel and unclothed near this girl—"

"Of the Lord?" Sophie interrupted, clearly unwilling to see the subject change, her face a mask of pure astonishment.

"We're still working on the validity of that statement," Cas admitted.

Sophie looked over at Dean. "Angels? Seriously?"

"It's a strange world out there, kiddo," Dean offered apologetically. He looked over at Cas. "Why the hell are you here, Cas? I didn't call you."

"No," Cas said. "Your brother did."

"Sam prayed to you?" Dean replied, confused. Praying to Cas was sort of _his_ thing. "Why would he do that?"

"I wasn't picking it up all too clearly, there's been a bit of a disconnect between heaven and earth recently, I'm not sure why," Castiel said, taking a few steps closer to Sophie, who just looked stunned. "From what I heard, he had something he needed help hiding."

It all began to make sense to Dean. And for once, he needed to commend his brother. Before he could say anything, the door to the room opened, and Sam walked in, three coffees in hand. When he closed the door and saw the scene before him, he groaned. "He scared her, didn't he?"

"Screamed bloody murder," Dean replied.

He nodded, and after a moment an amused look appeared on his face. "Nice skirt," he remarked, gesturing towards Dean's towel.

Dean, seeming to realize he was still standing, soaking wet, in the middle of the room, gave Sam a furious look and strode back into the bathroom, slamming the door, and reemerging about twenty seconds later wearing jeans and pulling on a gray undershirt. Sophie was now fully relaxed, but her eyes were narrow.

"Am I the something that you need help hiding?" she asked Sam bitterly.

Sam nodded, setting the coffees down on the table. "Not in the sense that you think though," he said. "Cas, can't you do some kind of…angelic cloaking thing on Sophie to keep all of these monsters away from her?"

Cas looked thoughtful. "I can render her undetectable from demons and some creatures, provided they don't have her scent."

Dean started to feel hopeful. "Only one vampire had her scent, and he's dead."

Cas nodded. "That's good. Well, there's something I can do, but…."

Sophie could practically feel the hesitation. "What?"

"It would be…excruciatingly painful for you," he said. "It involves a soul touch."

Dean was already shaking his head. "No. No way. You've said it yourself, soul touches are basically always fatal."

Cas shook his head. "Only if they're being used to harvest power from the soul. I'm not doing that, I'm just using the existing power to cloak her."

Dean looked over at Sam. "We're not making her do that. We can protect her well enough on our own."

"Don't I get a say?" Sophie challenged, stepping forward. "I don't want to be your burden for the rest of my life. If this is the best way to keep monsters away from me, why shouldn't we do it?"

Dean looked aggravated. "You've clearly never had an angel mess around with your insides. When he says it's painful, he's not kidding."

"More painful than being ripped apart by vampires and demons and whatever else is apparently out in the world?" she exclaimed, stepping out from her corner and staring at Dean face to face. "I might be new to this whole monster thing, and there's clearly a lot I still don't know about, but if there's one thing I _do _know it's that I won't let myself get killed. If this is what it takes, I'm doing it."

Dean looked over at Sam for back up, but he just shrugged. "Dude, it sucks, but she's right."

Dean narrowed his eyes. "She's fifteen, Sam. Fifteen. At fifteen you were still crying over broken pinkies."

"She's tougher than I was," Sam said. "We already stitched her up in the hotel room and she barely made a sound."

Castiel looked up at that, turning to Sophie. "You've been injured?"

"Try kidnapped and tortured by a sadistic vampire," Dean offered, his blood boiling just at the memory.

Cas walked over to Sophie, looking at her carefully. She was surprised at how Castiel made her feel, a strange combination of calm, safe, and wildly intimidated. His eyes were steady and held a touch of concern as he asked, "Would it be okay if I saw your injuries?"

Silently, she nodded. She shrugged off the jacket she was wearing and turned to show Cas the hand-stitched stab wound on her shoulder.

"And the bandage on your neck?" he asked after a few seconds.

"Almost forgot," she replied nervously, swiping her hair to the side and gently peeling off the bandage, which revealed jagged fang holes.

Cas was silent for a moment. "I can heal those, if you want."

Her eyes widened. "Really?"

He nodded and closed his eyes, touching two fingers to her forehead. She seemed to shimmer for a moment, and then he removed his hand and opened his eyes. Her mouth fell open, and she immediately lifted a hand to her neck and then to her shoulder. Smooth skin rested where gaping wounds had once, and the signature Winchester stitching was gone. All of the other cuts and bruises on her body had seemed to vanish as well. "Oh my God," she breathed. "You _are _an angel."

"I am," he confirmed matter-of-factly. "And I can promise you that if you let me cloak you, despite the pain, it _will_ work."

She nodded, finding a new resolve within herself. "I want you to do it. But first we need to check on Patrick."

"Patrick?" he asked questioningly, thrown off by her demand.

"Her friend," Dean commented.

"Where does he live?" Cas inquired. "I can check on him in just a moment."

"It's not just him we need to check on," Sam added. "It's her stepfather, too."

"I just need a name and a city," Cas said.

Both of the brothers turned to look at Sophie, who was still marveling at her healed body. "Apex, North Carolina," she said, still entranced. "Patrick Little."

"Your stepfather's name is Patrick, too?" Cas asked.

"Oh. No. His name is Steve."

Cas nodded, and then he disappeared.

Sophie looked up at Dean and Sam. "I haven't been drugged, have I?"

"Not to my knowledge," Dean replied.

"So this is real."

"I'm afraid so," Sam said.

Sophie shook her head. "So this is the world. Angels and demons and everything in between and" –she gestured to the two brothers— "…modern day Scooby Doo."

Dean looked offended. "We're called hunters, for future reference."

"You have the world's most unique job and you call yourselves hunters?" she asked in disbelief. "How boring."

Before Dean could respond, Cas reappeared in the room.

And he was drenched in blood.

**More to come soon! Favorite, follow, comment! Thanks a million! ~ Lacey :)**


	11. Chapter 11: Cloaked

_Chapter 11: Cloaked_

Dean immediately rushed over to him. "Cas, woah, are you okay?"

"This isn't my blood; I'm fine," Cas said, waving Dean off, looking completely unfazed by the fact that his clothes and a good portion of his face were covered in blood. "The boy, however, is not."

A hand flew to Sophie's mouth, and she shook her head. "No," she said, her voice muffled. Sam took a step in her direction, wanting to comfort her, but something in the way she was holding herself made him think twice.

"I'm sorry," Cas said, sounding genuine. "There was nothing I could do. I barely got out of there, the house was still surrounded. I never even got to check on your stepfather."

"Patrick's…dead?" she whimpered, tears forming in her eyes.

Cas had a grim look on his face. "The place was surrounded," he repeated, and then he turned to address Dean. "There are more creatures coming after Sophie than you might think. I should cloak her now."

"Right now?" Dean replied, his gaze drifting over to Sophie, who had let a couple tears slide down her face. She was a picture of complete and utter devastation. "She's…it's not a good time, Cas, can't you tell?"

"It'll never be a good time," Cas said, a little angrily. "There are monsters searching for her _now, _Dean, for reasons you have yet to explain to me. You can tell me later. Either way, the sooner she's hidden, the better."

"C'mon, Dean, you know he's right," Sam added.

"I know, I know," Dean snapped. He looked up at Sophie, heartbroken at the ragged look of loss on her face. No one her age should have gone through what she had. But she was still standing. Sam was right; she was stronger than they gave her credit for. "You ready, kiddo?"

She sniffed, wiping the tears away from her face, trying to look strong. "You said it's going to hurt a lot, right?" she asked Castiel.

"Yes," he replied apologetically.

She hesitated, clearly trying to choke down her fear. "Okay."

"If it makes you feel any better, I can make it so that you forget the pain once it's over," he tried.

She shook her head. "If I'm doing it, I'm going to remember it."

Cas nodded. "Go lie down." As she did what he said, Cas leaned over and said to Dean, "She's going to need something to bite on. We don't want the authorities to be called on us if she screams too loudly."

The thought of having to hear her scream more made his stomach feel like it was full of acid. Still, he just nodded, and he went into the bathroom and grabbed a hand towel. When he came back into the room, Cas had pulled up a chair next to the bed where Sophie was lying down, her face stony, her eyes closed.

Dean handed him the towel, and Cas placed it in Sophie's hand. "If you need to scream, bite down on this," he instructed.

"Just do it," she said through gritted teeth.

Dean stood by Sam, looking at her. "This doesn't feel right," he mumbled low enough that she couldn't hear.

Sam nodded. "I know. But this could save her."

"If it doesn't destroy her," Dean mumbled back.

Cas, a look of pure concentration on his face, placed the palm of his hand on her abdomen, and slowly, his hand seemed to sink into her body. Her reaction was immediate. She cried out in pain, and then the back of her hand flew to her mouth in an effort to stifle her screams. Where Cas's hand had entered her abdomen there was a shimmery golden glow, and his eyes were closed in deep focus. Tears were leaking out of Sophie's eyes, and little whimpers of pain escaped from her mouth. Mechanically, as if pulled by an invisible force, Dean stepped forward and squatted down on the other side of the bed, feeling helpless, wanting more than anything to be able to take the pain on for himself instead.

"You're going to be okay, Soph, okay?" he said, hating how he sounded. "You're going to be okay."

He was surprised when she turned her face to him, her eyes opening slowly, and he was even more surprised when he saw that her eyes seemed rimmed with light. Most surprising, though, was the fact that when Cas sank wrist-deep into her soul, she cried out and, reflexively, she reached out and grabbed Dean's hand.

He took hold of it, staring at her. She'd already closed her eyes again, tears falling slowly down her cheeks. "You're okay. Nothing's going to hurt you again, okay?"

He knew when he said it that it was a promise he couldn't keep, but he also knew that he was going to try to keep it until he was dead.

Without warning, Cas withdrew his hand and Sophie stopped moving, utterly unconscious. Her hand, which had been gripping his tightly just moments before, was limp.

Cas shook out his hand, looking mildly proud of himself. "It's done. She's completely cloaked."

"Is she okay?" Dean asked, standing up.

"She's perfectly fine. Just exhausted." Cas turned to look at Dean, his expression mildly insulted. "You never told me you had a daughter, Dean."

Sam and Dean both snapped their heads to attention. "She's not," Dean immediately said, tripping over the words a bit. "Or, well, we don't really know." He looked at Cas questioningly. "I never said anything about that, though."

Cas shook his head. "Oh, no, she is definitely you're daughter. I felt her soul, and I've felt yours, when I dragged it out of Hell. I know. She is undoubtedly part of you."

Dean felt his heart hammer in his chest. "What ever happened to good old fashioned paternity tests?"

Sam had an odd look on his face, one of disbelief and a sort of excited astonishment. "Are you sure?"

"I'm an angel, Sam. When I say something, I'm generally quite sure of it. Besides, one doesn't really need a test of any sort to deem that she is your daughter, Dean. She looks a bit like you. The eyes and—"

"The nose. Yeah, I've heard," Dean said, unamused. So…she's my daughter."

Sam clapped him on the shoulder. "Looks like you _are _the father of a Sophie."

"If I'd been around I'd never have let her been named Sophie," he grumbled. He sat down on the other bed. "God, Sam. I'm a damn father."

"And I'm an uncle!" he exclaimed.

"Don't get too excited. We're finding somewhere safe to leave her and then getting the hell away from her ASAP," Dean said, suddenly very sure of his plan. "I'm not putting her in any more danger. Ever. What just happened a minute ago is the last bit of pain she will ever feel because of me."

"Don't you think that's a little naïve, Dean?" Sam remarked. "She's in this now. If you ask me, her best chance is to stick with us."

"Yeah, well nobody asked you," Dean snapped.

"She needs us," Sam continued. "How do you not see that?"

Dean looked up at Cas. "Did you ever check on her stepdad?"

He nodded. "I just did a moment ago" he admitted.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Of course you did. Your angel magic is freaky sometimes, Cas, it really is." He rubbed his face with his hands for a moment, and then looked back up. "And he was…?"

"He fared much better than her friend. He wasn't touched. The group of creatures at the friend's house have not apparently identified the stepfather as having any sort of attachment to your daughter."

"Don't...don't refer to her as my daughter," Dean said quickly.

"But she is," Cas pointed out.

"It's still too weird," Dean groaned. He rubbed his face and then tried to clear his head. "Okay. If the monsters steered clear of her stepdad's, that's where shes going. We'll find them a new place to live, just to be cautious, and since she's cloaked now, they won't be able to find them."

Sam gave Dean a look. "I don't think that's a good idea, Dean."

"It's not. But it's the best one we have." When Sam still didn't look convinced, Dean tried to reason with him. "He's her family, whether or not they get along all that well. She's better off safe with him and unhappy for a few years than in constant danger with us forevermore."

"I don't know. She seemed to really not like her stepdad. Maybe there's something there we don't know."

Dean was already shaking his head. "No teenager actually gets along with their parents, especially a teenager whose mom died and left her with her stepfather. She's a girl, Sam, she's dramatic. She might not have the time of her life, but at least she'll have her life."

Sam heaved a big sigh. "So what? We drive her to Apex, hand her off to her stepdad, and…we leave. Just like that?"

Dean looked over at Sophie, at the tears drying on her pale cheeks, and he nodded. "Now. We go now."

**Thanks so much for all of the feedback! It's been great. For those of you asking questions...fear not! All will be answered in due time! ~ Lacey :)**


	12. Chapter 12: No Going Back

**Before I begin the chapter, I'd like to quickly respond to a review I got from an anonymous reader that I couldn't reply to privately because they reviewed as a guest. Essentially, reviewer, you gave me some (fairly credible) criticism in regards to Sophie's personality, which was that I play up her tough girl attitude too much. Although I had hoped I'd made it clear in the writing, I guess I didn't, which is good to know—I write fanfiction so that I can improve my writing and become better at what I love to do. My intention was never for her to really be super tough or badass or anything. My intention was for her to see the strong figure her father is and aspire to be like him, even if that meant sucking it up when she was really in physical/emotional pain and trying to be strong like him. Parts of her are strong, for sure—she _does _share DNA with Dean, after all—but you're right, she is just a teenage girl. I hope that as the story progresses, and her relationship with Dean develops, you'll see the more vulnerable side of her. As it is, keep in mind in this point of the story she's only known Dean for a little over 24-hours; she's confused and alone and she's not going to be pouring her soul out to him, no matter what his relation to her.**

**Never shy away from the tough criticism, guys. It's the only way for me, or anyone, to grow.**

**I hope I didn't sound too defensive there or anything, just wanted to clarify my end of that and hopefully show you guys that there's still room for development for Sophie! That being said, on to chapter 12!**

_Chapter 12: No Going Back_

Dean drove the Impala in unprecedented silence. No music, no talking. Just the sound of Sophie breathing slowly in the back and Sam shifting in his seat. Cas had already disappeared to somewhere else, another mission always at the forefront.

Sam spoke up. "Just to clarify, we're just going to hand her over, unconscious, to her stepfather, whom we know nothing about?"

"Stop harping on this, Sammy," Dean said. "As much as I'd like to say I didn't, I knew Caroline Gardner very well. And if she trusted this guy to be her daughter's guardian, he's trustworthy."

"Were you in love with her?" Sam asked after a moment. "Caroline?"

Dean shrugged. "Yes. No. I don't know. We were young. Who really knows what love is then?"

"But you cared about her."

"We already went over this. Yes, I cared about her. A lot. Enough to do whatever it takes to make sure her daughter is safe."

"Not just her daughter. Yours."

"Blood isn't everything, you know," Dean argued. "I don't know the first thing about her except she's not afraid to steal my liquor and she has a surprisingly high pain threshold."

"I know, I just…I don't know, Dean, something doesn't feel right about this. There are too many questions running through my mind. Why didn't all the monsters that went to town on Patrick go after her stepdad, who was in the same vicinity? Why was Patrick the one who filled out a missing person's report for Sophie and not her stepdad? Why is she so passive aggressive about everything personal in her life?"

"Look, the decision's made, Sam. We're only ten minutes from Apex. There's no going back now."

"I just feel like we're going to regret this," Sam said.

Dean looked over at his brother. "I mean, part of me probably will. The part that…that admittedly already cares about her. But, God, Sam, she's passed out in the back seat of the car right now because of what we put her through. She deserves better, and we're going to give her that."

Sam didn't say anything else. They both seemed to understand that they weren't going to get through to the other, and that either way, Sophie was being returned to her stepdad.

Fifteen minutes later, they were pulling up to a rather large, nice-looking house in a pretty neighborhood. Dean and Sam looked at each other, exchanging looks. "Nice digs," Sam commented.

"Like, really nice," Dean echoed. "Damn."

"Yeah, wow," Sam said. Dean parked the car and got out, Sam right behind him. They left Sophie to doze in the car as they walked to the front door. Dean straightened his jacket, clearly feeling obligated to look a bit nicer in the presence of obvious wealth. Sam rolled his eyes and knocked on the front door.

Within sixty seconds, the door was opening to reveal an attractive-looking man, perhaps a few years older than Dean. He was wearing a pair of dark slacks with a matching sports coat and a slick white button down shirt underneath. With one glance at the man's Rolex, Dean immediately decided he was a douchebag, and he tried not to let it bother him too much.

The man looked a little surprised to see someone as ragtag as Sam and Dean on his doorstep. "Can I help you?" he asked.

"Are you Steve?" Dean asked abruptly.

"Steve Gentry, yes. And you are?"

Sam stepped up. "Um, I'm Sam Winchester, and this is my brother Dean. We, uh…well, we have your stepdaughter with us. She's asleep right now, but she's unharmed. She said she lived here."

Steve looked surprised. "You have Sophia? With you?"

"It's a bit of a long story. But yes," Sam said.

"I was wondering what had happened to her, after I heard her friend Patrick had been found dead. I thought the worst." Dean tried not to be too suspicious about the lack of relief Steve expressed. "But I'm glad she's okay."

"Yeah, listen, buddy," Dean chimed in. "She's got a bit of a nasty tail on her. Some guys have been following her, harassing her. It's probably best if you guys clear town for a while, stay out of their way."

Steve shook his head, annoyed. "Of course she'd go and get herself involved in something dangerous and stupid. Classic Sophia."

Dean and Sam exchanged quick glances, both clearly expressing distaste. "But you'll get out of town, right?"

Steve shrugged. "I have a state of the art security system in place. No goon or thug is getting into my house, no matter how big the vendetta."

Dean shook his head. "You don't understand. These guys aren't going to care if you've got an alarm system. They just want to hurt your stepdaughter, and possibly you as well. You've got to leave."

Steve sighed, shaking his head. "I suppose we'll figure something out, if it's that bad. I have a house in Florida we could maybe stay at for a while, and I can work from there." He sighed. "I swear, sometimes, I just want her to turn eighteen and go off to college. Her mom was something special, really. But Sophia must've taken too much after whatever bad boy teenager her mom messed around with when they were kids, because I just can't manage her very well." Dean felt a tiny flare of pride in his chest, and he tried not to let it show on his face. "Well, let's bring her in."

"She's out right now. Pain meds," Sam said. "I can carry her wherever you want me to."

"Sure." Sam quickly returned to the Impala and gently pulled Sophie out of the back, shutting the door and carrying her back up to the house. When Dean saw her, he was still shocked at the magic Cas had worked on her, all of her bruises and cuts gone. He'd experienced the healing touch of Cas many times before in his life, but it was still bizarre seeing it on someone else. She looked perfectly healthy, which she was.

Dean stayed downstairs as Steve retreated into the house and Sam followed, climbing a winding staircase and turning down a hallway which led to a large, yet bland, room. The walls were painted a light beige, the large king sized bed covered with a light blue comforter, the furniture a simple dark wood. It almost looked like a hotel room. Not a teenage girl's room.

Sam had to voice the sentiment. "This is Sophie's room?" he asked.

Steve nodded. "Yeah."

Sam softly put her down on the bed. "You guys will get out of here as soon as she wakes up, won't you?"

"We'll do our best," Steve responded.

Sam didn't feel convinced. And he wasn't liking Steve Gentry very much at all. And he certainly wasn't liking the idea of leaving his newfound niece with the guy. But still, Dean's inarguably truthful words rang in his ears, and he left her there, exiting the room with Steve in tow.

They got back downstairs, where Dean was staring at a particularly exotic looking plant sitting on a table. He poked it, and then withdrew his hand when he saw Sam and Steve approaching. "She all settled in?"

Sam nodded and Steve just looked rushed.

"Well, thank you for bringing her in. I'll make sure I do what's best for her."

Dean and Sam nodded. "You mind if we check in on her?" Sam asked unexpectedly. "I don't know when we'll be back in town, but we, uh, just want to make sure she's doing well."

Steve shook his head. "That won't be necessary. Besides, you told me to move us down to Florida, and I doubt you'll be in the neighborhood then. Well, I'm sorry, but if you'd excuse me, I've got a meeting to attend in forty-five minutes across town and I can't be late."

Before they knew it, they were being ushered out of the house, and as they made their way to the Impala, Steve jumped into his Mercedes-Benz and zipped out of the driveway.

Sam turned to Dean. "He's a dick."

"I know."

"We can't just leave her with him."

Dean grew frustrated. "Sam, we talked about this. Like, a million times! Yeah, he's a dick, and I hate him probably more than you do, but at least with him she's alive!"

Sam was shaking his head as he opened the door to the Impala. "Dean. He just learned his stepdaughter didn't die a horrible, brutal death like her friend, and he dumps her unconscious body in her bed and drives off to a meeting. It's wrong."

"It sucks. And I hate it. You think I don't? I'm making the tough choices here, Sam." He opened the door to the driver's side. "C'mon, we're going."

Sam wanted to argue, but he knew an useless fight when he saw one. He slid in by Dean, who was already in the driver's seat, and who was clearly not in the mood for conversation. He turned the volume up on his stereo, and Metallica's "Enter Sandman" began to play, and Sam knew that, for now, there was no going back.

**Thanks for reading! Sorry it took so long to update, it's been a busy couple of weeks! More ahead soon! Favorite, follow, review! ~ Lacey :)**


	13. Chapter 13: Decisions

_Chapter 13: Decisions_

It had been a month. A month since finding and saving Sophie, a month since cloaking her from evil and dropping her off with her deadbeat stepfather.

Sam and Dean had stuck around long enough to make sure that Steve did indeed take Sophie to their house in Florida, and then they'd headed off for a case in Texas.

Dean was noticeably different, but it only took one mention of Sophie's name for Sam to learn that the whole thing was a topic best left untouched. Whenever she crossed his mind, he grew sullen and moody, and he avoided any possible case involving children of any kind. Something about him had changed, in way he certainly didn't understand.

All he knew was, despite his deep belief she was safer without him, he missed Sophie.

He didn't really know why. He'd known her for all of twenty-four hours, maybe a little bit more. But for some reason, in that time he'd felt something there, a pull towards her, like he was meant to be in her life. Or maybe she was meant to be in his. Either way, abandoning her, despite the logical argument he'd made for it, felt wrong. Deep inside his bones, he knew he made the wrong decision.

But still, he'd made it, and he wasn't going to go back on it.

They were tracking down a possible vengeful spirit in Iowa when Sam found the courage to bring up Sophie again. "Hey, Dean?" he asked over the top of his laptop. Dean was taking a big bite out of a double cheeseburger, and he looked up at his brother, clearly annoyed that his meal was being interrupted.

"What?" he asked, his mouth full of half-chewed food.

Sam tried his best not to look disgusted. "I was just wondering…maybe we should check on Sophie."

Dean glared at Sam, quickly swallowing the food in his mouth and setting the burger down. "Why?"

"Because," Sam reasoned. "The last time we saw her, she may or may not have had a supernatural army after her."

"And we made sure she and Steve got to their house in Florida. And Cas made sure they weren't followed. That's the most we can do."

Sam frowned. "No, it's actually the least we can do, and you know it."

"Sam, we're not having this conversation."

"Fine," Sam gave in. "Then you stay and solve this case. I'll go by myself."

"What?" Dean exclaimed. "No, Sam, you agreed to do this with me!"

Sam closed his laptop angrily. "Yeah, well, now I'm not. Maybe you can just leave her with that asshole forever, but I can't."

Dean looked around, getting annoyed that everyone in the diner they were at was looking over at them. "Sam, c'mon, stop being you for just a moment and think about this."

"I've thought about it, Dean!" Sam exclaimed. "I've thought about it for a month. And this life we live...this crappy, dark, dangerous, sad life…it doesn't usually allow us any happiness. Sophie was your one chance at that. Hell, she was _my _one chance at it. I don't care if it's selfish or risky! I want to give us a shot at finding a real purpose on this earth."

Dean soaked in Sam's words. As much as he didn't want them to, they struck a chord deep within him. He tried not to let it show, covering his emotion with glares. "Let's entertain the thought that I'm willing to get her away from her dick of a stepfather. What are we supposed to do with her? Cart her around with us while we fight monsters? Settle down and play daddy and creepy uncle in a house with a white picket fence with a teenage girl we both barely know? You know we can't do either of those. We don't exactly have many options."

"I know that, Dean," Sam said, exasperated. "I've given it some thought, and I think she could stay at the Men of Letters den. She'd be around us whenever we go back there, which is pretty frequently, and she could still have a relatively stable housing situation where she doesn't have to get sucked into the life of hunting. I even checked, and there's a high school a little ways away, she'd just need a car. She'd be away from Steve, able to work up a sense of independence, live a relatively normal life for a daughter of a hunter. And…and maybe you'd get to know her better. Whether or not you say it, I know you want to."

Dean was silent as he considered everything Sam said. "And, what? We leave her to live alone for weeks on end when we're out hunting? Is that even legal?"

"Since when have you cared about legality?" Sam asked.

Dean shrugged. "Since when have you been all family-man?"

"C'mon, poke more holes in my plan. I'm willing to try to figure out something. Even if all we can do is find her somewhere else that's not with the stepdad she seems to hate."

"I just…I don't know, Sam."

Sam looked at Dean, frustrated. "When are you going to admit that you're acting all cagey because you're scared of getting to know her, not because you're scared of not being able to protect her?"

"Wouldn't it scare you just a little bit, Sam, especially with our track record of getting our loved ones killed?" Dean fired back. "Since when has letting anyone into our lives done them or us any favors?"

"Stop thinking like a hunter for just one second, Dean," Sam said, staring at Dean with hard eyes. "Just once…think like a man who just learned he has a daughter, a daughter who is confused and terrified and living with someone who hates her."

Dean let the thoughts run through his brain, and for the first time since hearing the vampire Sebastian claim that Sophie was his daughter, he tried to be honest with himself.

Would life be a hell of a lot more difficult with a daughter? Yes.

Would he, and Sophie, for that matter, be better off never knowing each other? Probably.

Would he, if he completely booted her out of his life, be able to forget that inexplicable pull towards her, the one that told him that he had to protect her, be there for her, love her? Probably not.

Did he want her in his life? He was starting to think he did.

What was stopping him, holding him back?

"Look," Sam started again, "I know you're scared that she might get hurt and the blame will fall on us, but—"

"Sam, stop it. Do you think I'm that selfless?" Dean said, a little bit louder than he probably intended, judging by some of the looks he got from those around them. He brought his voice down lower. "Not to go all low-budget Hallmark movie on you here, but has it occurred to you that maybe I'm a little bit terrified of how much _she_ could hurt _me_?"

Sam looked genuinely shocked. "Hurt you? Dean, she's, like, ninety pounds. She couldn't hurt you if she tried."

"You know what I mean, Sam. If I let her become a part of my life, and then something happens and she gets hurt or goes away or worse…how am I going to hold up?"

Sam leaned back in his chair. "Listen to yourself. Do you think every parent has all the answers right off the bat? Just grow a pair and let's go get her."

And with that, something in Dean crumbled, and he gave in. "Fine. What the hell. We'll go."

Sam clearly was trying to suppress the surprise he felt at actually being able to convince Dean to go. "Really?"

"Don't make me second guess this, Sammy," Dean grumbled, taking a long drink of his soda. He desperately wished it was alcohol instead.

"I won't," Sam said, grinning. "We'll leave tomorrow."

**Thanks as always for reading! More to come soon! Favorite, follow, review...you know the drill, lovelies! ~ Lacey :)**

**PS-I know this was a bit of a dramatic, angsty chapter, but I tried to think of the kind of feelings and logistics the Winchesters would have to sift through if they were actually presented with this situation. This chapter was mainly to show A) The brothers make the decision to include Sophie in their lives, B) They acknowledge there's going to be some lifestyle changes to go along with it, and C) They think she's worth it all.**


	14. Chapter 14: Dimes and Death Wishes

_Chapter 14: Dimes and Death Wishes_

Sophie opened her eyes, squinting through the dark in her bedroom in an effort to see the clock hanging on the other side of the room. It was five in the morning. And it was a month since she had met the man she believed was her father.

She sat up, groggy but aware. She had always been an early riser, something her mom had hated. No matter how late she stayed up, she had never been able to sleep past eight. Now, as she rubbed her eyes, she wished she had the ability to sleep until noon. Sleeping meant you didn't have to deal with reality.

She hated living with her stepfather. Hated _him_. And no, he wasn't a horrible, drunken, abusive asshole. She'd seen that kind of person before. Patrick's father had been that way to him until the man had overdosed five years earlier. Patrick would show up to school with dark circles under his eyes and even darker bruises.

Her stepdad had never been quite that bad. But still, he'd never shied away from slapping her across the face when she didn't meet his expectations or got in his way, which was practically never, because for the most part Steve avoided and ignored her like she was about as significant as a dust mite. As much as she hated him, he hated her about ten times more. She was everything he never wanted.

It was really, really hard to be so unloved.

The only two people Sophie had ever loved, her mother and Patrick, were dead. And for the past month, she had sometimes wished she could join them.

But she didn't. She was no hunter, but she was still strong. And she was only fifteen. She knew there was still life to live, that her time with Steve was slowly drawing to an end, that she only had a few more years left under his roof before he was out of her life for good.

She finally pulled herself out of bed and walked to her closet, picking out distressed jeans that Steve hated and an oversized beige knit sweater. She pulled on some fuzzy socks and walked into her bathroom, where she quickly pulled her hair into a sloppy bun and put some mascara on.

After brushing her teeth, her hand went to the necklace she never wore at night for fear of it breaking, the necklace she kept in the top drawer under her sink. It was a simple silver chain with a flattened dime hanging off of it. The first of many dimes she and Patrick had placed on a nearby train track so that the train would flatten the coin. Patrick had scratched, in his second-grader handwriting, _You're my friend_ on one side, and he'd gotten his mom to drill a small hole in it so he could place it on a necklace.

Like every morning, she choked down the tears that threatened to spill over whenever she put on the necklace. Patrick was dead. Killed because she may or may not have been the daughter of a hunter. A hunter who clearly didn't have the slightest interest in her, because one moment she was letting an angel work some kind of crazy mojo on her and the next she was waking up in her bed at Steve's, into her own personal nightmare. A home she had returned to after just a couple of weeks in Florida, because Steve had said it was more convenient for him and if people really wanted her dead that badly it wouldn't make much of a difference where they lived.

Mom was dead. Patrick was dead. Her stepfather hated her.

For some reason, on that particularly morning, it all just felt like too much. She just couldn't do it anymore. She was tired of pretending that she was holding it together, that she could handle it, that she wasn't devastated that the one person she thought might be willing to at least accept her had dumped her back in the one place she never wanted to be ever again.

She sat down on the cold tile of her bathroom, grasping the flattened dime in her hand and feeling hot tears begin to run down her face. She regretted putting on the mascara, as her eyes began to sting, producing even more tears.

Patrick would've known what to say. He would've held her, told her it'd be okay, told her that no matter what he'd be there.

Except that wasn't possible. He was dead. Murdered. Brutally.

She sat like that for an hour, until she could see the light from the sun begin to creep its way under her door. The day had begun. She sighed, standing up and straightening her clothes. She had to suck it up, at least for the time being. She had school today.

After a while of trying to fix the mascara which had managed, it seemed, to get all over her face, she finally just washed her face completely and started over. Once she had finished, she pulled on some brown combat boots that were, admittedly, more fashionable and less functional, and she walked out of her room and down the stairs.

Steve was in the kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper. He didn't so much as look up when Sophie entered the room. Wordlessly, she made her way to the fridge and pulled out a jug of orange juice. She placed it on the counter and grabbed a couple frozen waffles, placing them in the toaster before pulling a cup out of a cabinet and pouring a glass of orange juice.

Suddenly, there was a thump at the window, and Sophie jumped. Ever since the whole kidnapped-and-tortured-by-a-vampire incident, she was easily spooked. When she turned to see what it was, she saw it was just some stupid bird that had flown into the window, but that wasn't before her arm had flailed and knocked the jug of orange juice onto the floor. The jug shattered and the orange juice went flying, splattering everything within a two foot radius.

She froze, looking up just in time to see Steve look up from his newspaper. He turned around to glare at her. "Sophia, what the hell have you done?"

"I'm sorry, it was an accident," she said, immediately bending down to pick up the biggest shattered pieces.

Steve stood up. "For God's sake, Sophia, when are you going to actually be useful instead of the huge walking hurricane that you've always been?"

Sophie knew the best way to deal with Steve when he got like this was just to be as quiet and unresponsive as possible, so she just mumbled, "I'm sorry," and kept picking up pieces of glass.

Today, however, Steve seemed unwilling to let it go. "No, you can't just keep apologizing and expect everything to magically be okay," he snapped, getting visibly angry. "Ever since you were dropped back on my doorstep you've been nothing but a sniveling, pathetic deadweight. You don't do anything around the house, you just sit there and cry and make bigger messes than you made before. _Would you look at me when I talk to you?_"

Her head snapped up, detecting the dangerous tone in his voice. No, Steve was not a physically abusive man. Abusive implied, in her mind, that it happened frequently. But there had been one or two times where he'd let his anger get the better of him, and he would lash out. And judging by the color rising in his cheeks, it was about to happen again.

Sophie jumped up, about to make a beeline for the door, and yelped when she was yanked back by the collar of her shirt. Steve had grabbed a hold of it, and it cut into her neck as she stumbled backwards, coughing. "I have to go to school," she tried.

"You're not just going to leave that mess there!" he yelled.

Maybe it was a burst of fury, or maybe it was a moment of utter surrender in which nothing seemed to matter anymore. Whatever it was, for the first time in all the time Sophie knew him, she yelled back. "I was cleaning it up before you got up and started screaming at me for no reason!"

The moment the words left her mouth she smashed her lips together, eyes wide with the shock that she had just yelled at Steve. He looked shocked as well, although his surprise turned to anger quickly. He slapped her across the face, hard, and she stumbled into the kitchen counter, banging her hip and grabbing onto the edge for support.

At that moment there was a knock on the door.

Sophie opened her mouth to say something about it, but Steve, who had apparently not heard it at all, was still on his rampage. "Your mother would be so ashamed of you!" he exclaimed. "All you do is go to school and come home and sit in that room of yours! You should make yourself useful for once and actually help out!"

"I do!" she cried, suddenly forgetting about the fact that she shouldn't be making him angry. Her own pent up rage was surging through her, and she found herself unable to contain it. "I do help out, you just don't give a single damn and don't bother to notice! My mom would be ashamed of _you_!"

Steve looked even more surprised. Sophie had never raised her voice to him, not even once. And she had especially never mentioned her mother around him. But the weight of everything—her life, and the life that could have been—was hitting her all at once. She stood fuming, the red mark on her face throbbing.

Steve didn't hesitate. He grabbed the coffee mug he'd been drinking out of, and he hurled it in her direction.

She screamed as it shattered a centimeter from her ear, a couple pieces of ceramic getting stuck in her hair in the process. Steve moved forward, grabbing the front of her shirt in his fist and pushing her against the wall. "You don't talk back to me, kid," he snarled. "You don't talk back to me, you don't yell at me, you don't show me the slightest sign of disrespect, got it?"

Sophie's bravery had run out. The sight of him, so angry and violent, right in front of her, made her resolve crumble. "Okay," she mumbled. "Alright, fine, just let go of me."

There was the sound of a loud thud—a door being kicked open?—right as Sophie realized Steve's fist was flying towards her face. It connected with her cheek and her head snapped back as she saw stars and slid down the wall. She realized he'd let go of her, and she covered her cheek with her hand, groaning as she curled up into a defensive ball.

That's when she heard the new voice.

"You son of a bitch!"

**So, I'm back! I know it has been many a month since my last update, and my excuses are as follows: A) I started college, which is much more time consuming than people let on, B) I had a really bad bout of tonsillitis, during which all I did was cry, sleep, and drink tea, C) I lost my inspiration for a while, but with Season 10 now airing, that's getting restored :)**

**Thank you all for reading! More to come soon! ~ Lacey :)**


	15. Chapter 15: Long Drive Ahead

_Chapter 15: Long Drive Ahead_

"You son of a bitch!"

Sophie's head snapped up and she looked on, in shock, as Sam and Dean Winchester entered the room, both looking angry and surprised.

Steve, who was breathing heavily and wearing a mask of fury, looked at them sharply. "You two? I told you not to come back. Get the hell out of my house!"

"And we told you to take care of Sophie, not beat her up like she's not half your size!" Sam yelled.

"Little bitch keeps asking for it," Steve spat. "You try putting up with a teenage girl for year after year and see if you don't feel like knocking the daylights out of her."

"There's a big difference between feeling like hitting someone and actually hitting someone," Dean stated, his face a terrifying mask of fury and calmness.

Steve let out a borderline maniacal laugh. "Sophia can take it, she's a big girl." He took one step in her direction, and as she shrank back Dean took a few steps forward and, without hesitation, he sent his fist flying straight into Steve's jaw.

Before Steve could right himself, Dean had reeled back his arm and sent his fist in Steve's direction again. Suddenly he was pounding on him, hard, holding the collar of his shirt like Steve had been doing to Sophie moments before, punching his face again and again until Sam finally pulled him off, silently and clearly a little reluctantly.

Steve was lying on the floor, groaning, blood pouring out of his nose and mouth, his left eye almost entirely shut. "Why the hell do you care so much?" he groaned. "You want her? Take her."

Dean was clearly trying to calm himself down as he looked at his now bloodied fist. "We will," he said, breathing heavily. He walked over to Sophie, lifted her up off of the ground effortlessly, and walked out of the room, Sam following close behind.

Sophie was in shock as he silently carried her to the Impala, setting her down on the hood of the classic car. Sam stood a few feet away, clearly not wanting to get in the middle of the moment.

Sophie got a good look at Dean's face. His jaw was tense, like he was gritting his teeth, and he was staring at her with hard, angry eyes. Even though she knew the anger wasn't directed at her, she looked down.

"Are you okay?" he finally asked, his voice low and gruff.

She nodded, unable to speak.

"How badly did he hurt you?" he continued, pulling a lone piece of ceramic mug out of her hair and flicking it graciously into the grass.

She said nothing, her tongue still frozen in her mouth. She couldn't look up at him, she just couldn't.

"Sophie, how badly did he hurt you?" he asked again, impatient.

She finally lifted her head, making eye contact with Dean as tears welled up in her eyes. "Why did you leave me with him?" she asked softly, her voice cracking. "You didn't…didn't even give me a choice…."

Something in Dean's eyes looked cracked, like something he'd always believed in had been ripped away from him. "I didn't know he was… like that," he tried to say.

Sophie shook her head. "He's not usually. Normally it's just…verbal."

"You expect me to believe that, after seeing what he just did to you?" Dean asked sternly.

"Believe what you want, it's the truth," she mumbled.

"Why the hell would you defend him?" Dean exclaimed.

"I'm not defending him," she said quietly. "I'm telling you the truth. He's only acted like that a couple times before. Usually he's just…mean."

"Mean," he deadpanned. "The little boy who calls you stupid on the playground is mean, Soph. Your stepdad is a vicious son of a bitch. And I'm sorry I made the call to leave you with him."

She tried to choke back the tears, but a few of them fell anyway. "Just take me away from him," she said finally. "Anywhere. With you, two thousand miles away from you, I don't care…I just never want to see him again."

Dean was quiet for a moment. "We can make that happen," he said. "C'mon, get in the car, we've got a lot of miles to cover tonight."

For the first time, she looked confused. "Where are we going?"

"Lebanon, Kansas," he stated, ushering her off of his car and into the backseat. "It's kind of where we have our headquarters."

Her eyes widened. "Hunter headquarters? You have a _headquarters_?"

"There's a lot you don't know," he said. "Either way, it'll take us twenty hours to get there if we're lucky, so we're leaving now. Not to mention the fact that being in the same vicinity as your asshole stepdad makes me really, really unhappy." He closed the door to the backseat and looked over at Sam. "You ready?"

"We need to stop at a convenience store first. We need to get some food, and drinks, and Sophie could probably use some ice for her face."

Dean looked at Sophie, who was looking out of the opposite window in the backseat as she absentmindedly tried to wipe the remaining tears off of her face. The bastard had clocked her pretty good, and Dean was pretty sure that in twenty-four hours she'd have a pretty bad black eye. It was nothing compared to what Sebastian had done to her a month prior, but for some reason it made him ten times angrier.

Perhaps because this time, it was one hundred percent his fault.

"Yeah, we should," Dean said. "You know what, give me one second, I have one more thing I have to do."

He started walking back towards the house. "Dean," Sam called, "what the hell are you doing?"

"Getting some ice!" he yelled back.

Before Sam could stop him, Dean was back inside of the house, feeling a rage course through his veins like never before. He couldn't really identify it—he was angry at himself, at the world, at everything—but he did know _exactly _who'd be taking the brunt of it.

He strode into the kitchen, where Steve was now on his feet, wiping blood off of his face over the kitchen sink. He turned sharply when he heard Dean enter. "What the hell?" he said, his words thick and slow due to the blood still pouring out of his nose. "You got what you came for."

Dean said nothing. He walked up to him, grabbed him once again by the collar, and slammed him into one of the walls, his forearm pressing against the man's neck, making breathing difficult. "You need to get one thing straight before I leave for good, pal, so listen up," Dean snarled. "If I so much as hear a rumor that you're in the same _state _as my daughter, I will end your worthless life. Capiche?"

Steve, struggling to breathe, choked out two words. "Your…daughter?"

Dean didn't answer, instead letting go of his throat and delivering a right hook which rendered Steve entirely unconscious.

Though it wasn't nearly enough, Dean had to admit it made him feel a good deal better.

He stepped over Steve's unconscious form and made his way to the pantry, where he pulled out a plastic bag and then proceeded to the freezer, where he filled the bag up with ice. While he was at it, he found some first aid supplies and a few snacks and drinks for the road.

After bundling it all together, he walked back out the door and up to the Impala, where Sam was still waiting outside. He looked worried. "You didn't kill him, did you?"

"And if I did?" Dean asked, dumping the things he'd nabbed from his house into the passenger seat before walking back around to the driver's side.

"You didn't, though, right?" Sam asked.

"No, Sam, I didn't kill him. Just…gave him a warning."

Sam looked relieved. "I hope your warning involved your fist, because I thought we were letting him off too easy."

Dean gave him a little grin. "What's a Winchester warning without a fist added to the equation, Sammy?"

He laughed. "I expected nothing less."

Dean slid into the driver's seat, looking back at Sophie and tossing her the bag of ice, which she caught deftly. "You okay?" he asked again.

She gave him a shaky smile. "Stop asking me that, the answer's not going to change."

He shrugged his shoulders. "Alright, then."

He turned to start the car as Sam slid in, pulling out of the driveway and onto the road.

Sophie sighed. "I didn't mean to sound mean," she said.

Dean took a look at her in the rear view mirror. With her growing black eye and tear stained face, there was no way on heaven, hell, or earth she could've looked less mean. "I know. You should probably settle in back there. We've got a long drive ahead of us."

**Thanks as always for reading! I'm glad I decided to come back to this story! Comment, favorite, or follow if your heart so desires! Until next time! ~ Lacey :)**


	16. Chapter 16: Winchester After All

_Chapter 16: Winchester After All_

When Sophie woke up from her nap, she groaned.

Her head was killing her. Pain shot through her brain, and she could feel that her eye had gotten about twice as swollen from the time she'd fallen asleep until the time she'd woken up. She glanced out of the window to see that night had fallen, and she blinked painfully a few times. "Are we there yet?" she murmured.

"Not even close, kid," Dean's voice came from the front.

"How long have I been asleep?" she asked, straightening herself up.

"About four hours," Dean said. "Sam was close behind you," he added, gesturing to the hulking, sleeping form of his brother.

She went to rub her eyes, but the moment her hand made contact with her face she winced. Dean was watching her using the rear view mirror. "Your face looks wrecked," he remarked.

"Thanks," she scowled.

"We could stop to get more ice if you want," he suggested tentatively.

She shook her head. "What's the use? I'll have this black eye for a week, regardless."

"I wish I'd killed him," Dean told her after a moment. "I keep thinking about it, and I wish I had."

"He deserves a life of unhappiness," Sophie said, shaking her head. "Not death. Too easy."

Dean looked at her carefully. "Guess you really are a Winchester after all," he mused.

"Well, like you said, we don't know for certain," she sighed.

"No," Dean said slowly. "We do."

She looked confused. "Um, did you, like, pluck a hair out of my head or something when I was unconscious, back when Cas did the cloaking thing?"

"No," Dean said defensively. "But when he felt your soul…he could tell."

Sophie pinched the bridge of her nose, her head pounding. She wasn't sure if it was the injury, or the whole situation. Probably both. "Angels are freaking weird," she grumbled.

"You don't even know," Dean snorted.

Sophie was quiet for a moment. "So…so it's for sure? You're my….I'm your…."

"Yep," Dean said curtly, albeit a little awkwardly.

She was quiet for another moment. Then, "Ah."

"Please, keep the excitement down, you might wake up Sammy," Dean commented sarcastically.

"Sorry," she said. "It's just…it's weird. Living your whole life without knowing who your dad is, and then suddenly you know, but he's actually a monster-fighting ninja."

"I'm less ninja, more Batman, but I get what you're saying," Dean said. "I get it; I'm not exactly what you probably wished your dad would be like."

"You're right," she said. "But you also can't wish for something you don't know exists."

For some reason, that made Dean feel a little bit warmer inside. "Well, if it makes you feel any better, I never consciously wanted a daughter, but if I had to have one, I'm glad it's you."

Dean was surprised that Sophie laughed. It was the first time she had genuinely laughed, and he was struck by the fact that she sounded just like her mom had whenever he'd made her laugh. "I don't know whether to thank you or be offended," she admitted.

"You're safer just not saying anything," he replied, grinning.

She grinned back, and then looked at the time. "How long until we get there?"

"I don't know, maybe six hours," Dean said.

She sighed. "So this is what you two do? Burn oil fields worth of gas driving across the country and killing monsters?"

Dean nodded. "Pretty much."

"That's insane. And sort of badass. Can you teach me?"

Dean looked back at her, amused and surprised. "No way," he said. "You're not killing any monsters. Trust me, living as normal a life as possible is much better." He thought about it for a moment. "Although we're definitely training you to defend yourself. From assholes and demons alike."

Sophie nodded. "Deal. I don't think I'm exactly ready to give up everything normal and not-crazy anyway."

"Good. Because Sam and I think we know a way you can lead a relatively normal life in the middle of the hunter insanity."

Sophie raised her eyebrows, despite the fact that it was painful. "How?"

"There's a high school near our…headquarters," Dean explained. "As long as you wouldn't mind riding a bike or driving there, you could go to it. There'd be some weeks at a time where you'd be living alone, but…."

"It's better than living with Steve," Sophie said.

"From what I saw," Dean said, "living on the streets would be better than living with him."

She shrugged. "I mean, usually he just ignored me."

"Didn't really look like that from what I saw," he retorted, getting angry again.

"I don't know. He just…treated me like I was nothing. He hated taking care of me and when I got in the way. And today he just, I don't know, snapped. And by some lucky chance, you managed to be there."

Dean just shook his head. "What the hell did you do to make him snap?"

Sophie sighed, shrugging. "I dropped a pitcher of orange juice while he was reading the paper. It shattered and the juice went everywhere."

Dean looked back at her in shock and fury. "You dropped a container of juice and he punched you in the face?"

"Not exactly. He yelled at me, and for the first time I kind of yelled back at him, and he didn't really like that all that much I guess."

Dean shook his head again, slowly. "God. I can't believe your mom would have married that man. Much less have left you with him."

"Yeah," Sophie said quietly. "I don't really get it either."

Dean looked back at her, taking in her small, bruised face and those eyes that looked so much like his own. "What happened? To Care…to your mom?"

"Car crash," Sophie said, her voice steady in the way that someone who's trying to force steadiness is. "It was almost two years ago, now. We were coming home from a piano lesson and it was raining and the other driver had been drinking." Sophie looked down. "She didn't even make it into the ambulance."

Dean stared forward at the road, his eyes narrowed. "I'm sorry. I really am."

"Thanks," she said. "I'm better now, for the most part. The first year was…really, really hard. But afterwards, that's when I started looking for you."

"How the hell did you figure out where we were?" Dean asked. "Sam and I usually aren't very easy to track."

"Really, I didn't do much," Sophie said. "My friend Patrick did a lot. I gave him all the information I had about you, and he did a lot of digging—he was really good at computers, and he said he thought he found someone matching your description in Atlanta, Georgia. Long story short, I stole money from Steve and flew down to Atlanta to where you guys were, and you'd already left but I talked to someone who'd seen you and they said you had mentioned being on your way to North Carolina. I narrowed it down to a city, and…well, I guess now it makes more sense, but someone told me they'd seen someone matching your description at that diner we were at when I was kidnapped. Now I bet it was someone working for Sebastian to get me into the same vicinity. But I got myself most of the way there."

"Wow," Dean said. "You wanted to find me that badly."

She rolled her eyes. "In my defense, I thought I was looking for your run of the mill long lost father, not a ninja warrior."

"We went over this. More Batman, less ninja."

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah, I know. But hey, at least I'm not like an ax murderer or anything like that."

Sophie grinned. "True."

"Although I was the FBI's Most Wanted at one point," Dean mused to himself. "And I have killed a few things with an ax."

Sophie's grin dropped. "FBI's Most Wanted?"

"It's a long story."

She sighed. "I feel like this is going to take some getting used to."

"Probably, kiddo," Dean agreed. "Not to sound like a jackass, but you're not how I pictured any kid of mine turning out to be."

Sophie crossed her arms and for a moment, seemed to pout. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, first of all, if I had been in charge of naming you, there's no way you'd have been given as girly a name as Sophia."

"I like my name," she defended.

"I like it too," Dean said, backtracking, seeing he'd probably just stepped into dangerous territory. "I just would've named you something more badass."

"Okay," Sophie said, her tone almost challenging. "What else about me isn't up to par?"

"Well, you probably haven't held a weapon in all your life."

She bit her lip. "True."

"And you probably like the color pink."

"What's wrong with that?"

"And you probably like Taylor Swift."

"Okay, hold up," she said, sitting up. "Taylor Swift is the best singer on the planet."

At that, Dean slammed on the brakes and began to veer off to the side of the road, during which time Sam jolted awake.

"Dean!" he exclaimed, grabbing onto the dashboard for dear life. "What the hell?"

Dean ignored him and parked the car. He looked back at Sophie, who looked completely dumbstruck. "Did you just say Taylor Swift is the _best singer on the planet_?"

At that, Sam rolled his eyes. "God, Dean, really?"

"Sam! We can't keep her if she's going to listen to dinky, sparkly, pop crap all day!"

"Keep me?" Sophie repeated, annoyed. "I'm a girl, not a puppy."

Dean looked at her. "You need to learn one thing fast, sweetheart. Led Zeppelin is everything and anything that you will ever need."

"Who?"

At that, Dean's eyes widened. "_Who_? Did you just ask me who Led Zeppelin is?"

"He's…he's like a singer or something, right?"

Dean looked to Sam, his face the picture of utter disbelief. "It's not a 'he'. It's a band. It's _the _band."

"Oh," Sophie said, looking confused. "I'm sorry?"

"How can you not…your mom _loved _Zeppelin."

Sophie just shrugged. "She liked Taylor Swift, too."

Dean was shaking his head before she finished speaking. "Unbelievable. I have a daughter who doesn't know Zeppelin. I didn't think that was possible."

"Well, I have a father who doesn't like Taylor Swift," Sophie retaliated. "And that's a little disappointing for me too, quite frankly."

Sam threw his hands up. "You're both being ridiculous. You two aren't going to be exactly like each other, primarily because you barely know each other. So let's get past that now. Dean, we're running out of daylight, so get back on the road."

"This is unbelievable," Dean said, turning around and starting the car. He looked back at Sophie, who looked bemused. But when his eyes met hers, and she glanced back at him with an unfamiliar look of confusion and affection, he could feel his heart melt a little bit. "We're stopping to get you more ice," he said, annoyed at how easily she softened him up, turning around again and driving back onto the road.

"You don't need to," Sophie said.

"Yeah, I do," Dean retorted. "The swelling's getting worse. If we get more ice on it now we might be able to prevent it from getting too bad."

"Okay," she said. "If you want."

After about ten minutes they found a gas station, which Dean went into and came back out with a disposable cooler and a giant bag of ice. He poured most of it into the cooler, which he set in the back, and then poured a smaller amount in a plastic bag, which he handed to Sophie. "You can just dump out the water and refill it when it melts," he said, pointing towards the cooler. Then he popped the trunk of the Impala and returned with a few beers, placing them into the cooler before sliding back into the driver's seat.

And then, finally, they were on their way again.

**Hope you liked! Seriously, the exchanges between Dean and Sophie are so fun to write. Thanks for reading! Stay tuned! ~ Lacey :)**


	17. Chapter 17: Two Weeks

_Chapter 17: Two Weeks_

When they arrived in Lebanon, Sophie was asleep.

Her eye was almost completely swollen shut and her head was leaning against the window, her hair falling across her face. Her breathing was slow and peaceful, and when Dean stopped the car and looked back at her, he was unwilling to wake her up.

Sam seemed to understand, so he was the one who reached back and put a gentle hand on Sophie's knee. "Hey, Sophie," he said softly, shaking her knee gently. "We're here. Time to wake up."

She groaned, lifting her head up from the window and then groaning even louder, covering her head with her hand. "We're here?" she asked, her voice muffled underneath her hands.

"Yeah."

"Do you guys have any painkillers?" she asked, voice still muffled.

"More than you could ever want," Dean assured her.

"Okay, good," she said, unbuckling her seat belt and opening the door. The brothers followed suit, sliding out of the car and shutting the doors. Sophie stumbled out and Dean quickly went over to her, helping her the rest of the way out and closing the door. She yawned. "What time is it?"

"It's four AM," Sam said.

"Oh," she said. She looked back into the window of the car. "I don't have anything."

"What?" Dean replied, confused.

"I don't have anything," she repeated. "No clothes, no toothbrush, no hairbrush, no books, no anything."

"Well, not to keep throwing bad news in your face, but hunters tend to be pretty low maintenance," Dean admitted.

"But we'll get you what you need," Sam threw in. "Tomorrow, maybe, when we have a chance to rest up."

Sophie nodded. "Okay. So is there a reason why we're parked in the middle of the woods?"

"It just _looks _like we're parked in the middle of the woods," Dean said. "But we're really outside the entrance to the Batcave."

"The Batcave?" Sophie repeated skeptically.

"It's more like a bunker," Sam told her. "Dean just likes to call it the Batcave because it's…well, it's pretty covert."

"Is it, like, underground?" she asked, suddenly wary. "And dark and creepy? Because I didn't sign up for dark and creepy."

"Actually," Dean said, grabbing the cooler out of the back and dumping the now-melted contents onto the ground, "you kind of did. Luckily for you, the Batcave is _not _dark and creepy, just all the shenanigans that go on inside of it."

Before Sophie could reply, they were walking into what looked like the entrance to a tunnel. "Are you sure it's not dark and creepy?" she asked, looking hesitant.

"Positive," Sam said.

"Sure. Whatever you say."

Unconvinced, Sophie followed the Winchesters inside.

And she was surprised.

The place was huge, almost cavernous. And it was fascinating, an interesting mix of quaint library and secret lair. Sophie walked in, staring up the high ceilings and the walls full of books. "Wow."

"Pretty cool, huh?" Sam said, tossing his bag onto a large wooden table.

"Yeah, wow," Sophie repeated in awe. "It's…like nothing I've ever seen before."

"I've got a feeling you'll be saying that more than you want to in the future," Dean said, also tossing his bag on the table and turning to look at Sophie.

Sophie tried to narrow her eyes at him, but it just turned into a wince.

Dean deflated. "Why don't I go find those painkillers and Sam can show you where you can sleep."

"Okay," she said. "I wouldn't say no to Vicodin, just so you know."

"Keep dreaming, kiddo," he said, but he couldn't keep the grin off his face as he turned to go rummage through the stash of meds.

Meanwhile, Sam led Sophie down a hallway with a bunch of doors. "Pretty much all of these are empty bedrooms," he explained. "You're welcome to pick whichever one you want. They're all more or less the same, except I think a few have bathrooms connected, so you might want to scope them out to find one of those."

"Okay," she said. "I think for now I'd settle for a couch or an air mattress, so I'm not really picky."

"Well, here," Sam said, pushing one of the doors open. "I think this one is one of the better ones."

The room was small, with one brick wall and the others painted a soft white. The floor was wooden and there were two more doors, which upon further inspection led to a tiny personal bathroom and an even tinier closet. The furniture was bare bones, consisting of a dresser, a bed, and a small bedside table.

Sophie sighed as she collapsed onto the bed. "Finally."

Sam cracked a grin. "I'll go see if I can find some sheets somewhere."

"Thanks," she said sleepily as he left. She stared up at the ceiling, breathing in slowly, wondering how on Earth she had ended up here. Yesterday she'd been living with her heartless stepfather, and now she was a thousand miles away with her brand new long-lost monster-killing biological father and uncle. It was madness. It was insanity.

There was a tapping on her door, and she lifted up her head. It was Dean, balancing a water bottle and a container of pills on top of a pile of sheets. "Hey," he said, quickly dropping the pile onto the mattress beside Sophie. "Why don't you get off of this bed for a second so we can actually make it look like one?"

Yawning, Sophie complied, sliding off of the bed and grabbing the water and the bottle of pills and placing them off to the side before grabbing the sheets. As she unfolded the fitted ones, Dean unfolded the regular ones, and in a relatively not awkward silence, they made up the bed.

When it was made, she immediately sat down and tugged off her combat boots, tossing them into the corner of the room and leaning back on the bed. "I've never been more excited to go to sleep in my life."

The corner of Dean's mouth twitched upwards. "Take some of that medicine first. You'll want it."

Sighing, she sat up and unscrewed the lid of the bottle of painkillers, taking three into her hand and tossing them back before chasing them with water. "I hope this does the trick," she said.

"It probably will. But if it doesn't, the kitchen's not too hard to find, and there's ice there you can get."

"Okay," she said, looking up at Dean. "Thank you. And not just for the pills. For taking me with you, for coming back when you did, for… for everything."

Dean nodded, quiet for a moment. "I know this is a lot different from what you…well, from what you or I expected. But…," he paused, struggling for words, not knowing what to say or how to say it. Finally, he settled for, "But I'm glad you're here."

Sophie grinned, sliding underneath the sheets and curling up into a ball. "I'm glad I'm here, too," she said.

Dean nodded. "Well, I'll let you get to sleep then," he said. "Goodnight."

"Night, Dean," Sophie replied sleepily, her eyes already closed. Looking at her for just a moment longer, Dean walked to the door, turned off the light, and shut it behind him.

* * *

Dean was sitting at the table, drinking from a glass of whiskey and huddled over newspapers. It was now five AM, and Dean was finding that even though he'd been awake for over twenty-four hours, he couldn't sleep. Instead, he was scouring for a new hunt.

There was a rustle, prompting Dean to lift his head and see his brother walking into the room, wearing sweatpants and a ratty T-shirt. "Dean? What the hell are you still doing up?" he asked, unscrewing the cap to a water bottle in his hands and taking a drink.

"Can't sleep," Dean said simply. "So I'm looking for a case."

Sam looked shocked. "Dean," he started, "don't you think we should maybe hold off on hunting for a week or so?"

"Why?" Dean asked, flipping the page of the newspaper without looking up at his brother, taking another drink of whiskey.

Sam looked almost at a loss for words. "Well, for starters, we're now the guardians of a fifteen-year-old girl."

At this, Dean looked up. "So? We agreed, this doesn't mean we stop hunting."

"No, it doesn't. But we've got to figure some stuff out before we jump headfirst into hunting again. Let's give it two weeks, okay?"

"Two weeks?" Dean replied incredulously. "We haven't taken two weeks off in…well, ever."

"Then there's a first time for everything," Sam replied. "We have someone else to watch after now, and we need to make sure she's ready to stay by herself for weeks on end while we're out. We need to make sure she gets enrolled at the school nearby, that she has a way to get herself there, that she knows some basic defensive skills in case she runs into something when we're not there, that she has the fundamental knowledge about the world we actually live in—"

"Okay, okay, I get it," Dean allowed, closing the newspaper. "Two weeks to give her a crash course in all things supernatural."

"Good," Sam said, taking a long chug of the water in his hand. "Now seriously, put the whiskey away and go to sleep. You've been up over a day."

"Just a little longer."

"Dean," Sam said, sounding exasperated. He grabbed the newspaper out of Dean's hands, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it behind his shoulder. Dean look affronted and was about to say something, but Sam cut him off. "Tomorrow is going to be super weird, trying to figure out how to take care of your daughter, so you might as well be semi-well rested for it."

"Fine," Dean said, finishing the last of his drink and standing up. "You win. Now will you stop babying me and go to bed yourself?"

"Sure thing," Sam said. "Right after you."

Dean threw his hands up in surrender and walked out of the room, flipping his brother off right before he disappeared down the hallway. He turned into his room, flopped onto his bed, and closed his eyes.

But no matter how hard he tried, a peaceful sleep was never within his reach. All he saw, again and again, instead of the inside of his eyelids, was Steve Gentry's fist connecting with Sophie's terrified, helpless face, and Dean being just a hair too far away to do anything about it.

**Thanks for reading! So stoked for the 200th episode on Tuesday. Looks like it's gonna be one for the books. Stay tuned! ~ Lacey :)**


	18. Chapter 18: Burning Daylight

_Chapter 18: Burning Daylight_

The next morning, when Sophie woke up, she immediately noticed that the pain in her head was significantly less severe than it had been when she fell asleep. She sat up, blinking slowly, trying to remember where she was.

The room around her, however bare, seemed warm to her in some way. Warmer than her room at Steve's ever had felt. She yawned and then swung her feet off the bed, looking down and realizing she was wearing the same clothes as she had been for a whole day. Sighing, she slid off the bed and made her way to the bathroom, shuffling in and turning on the light.

A duffle bag was placed on top of the toilet seat, and upon further inspection Sophie realized it was the bag filled with clothing she'd gotten at the thrift store the first time she'd ever met Sam and Dean. She grinned almost without meaning to. She thought they would've thrown that away.

_Kind of how you thought they threw you away_, she thought to herself.

Then she shook her head. No, she had to respect the decision that Dean had made. She was beginning to see how he thought, how he had this need to protect that drove him to make decisions regardless of how anyone else felt about it. And he thought leaving her had been the right thing to do. He hadn't known about Steve, but still.

She looked in the shower, not at all surprised to see that there was no soap or shampoo of any kind. Still, she spotted a towel, and she stripped off her clothing and stepped in to rinse off. After five minutes, she dried off and pilfered through the bag, grabbed some clothing out of it, and began to pull it on. When she looked into the mirror, she saw a girl with damp hair tied into a haphazard bun, one tired eye and one swollen eye, wearing jeans, a fitted gray T-shirt, a green jacket, and boots. She sighed at the sight of her eye, wishing that Steve could have socked her in the stomach or basically anywhere else. Anywhere that wouldn't be a constant reminder to everyone what she'd been suffering through in the last month.

But there was nothing else to do. She straightened her jacket, took a deep breath, and then walked out into the bunker.

She wasn't surprised to see that Sam and Dean were already awake, sitting at the table, drinking coffee and reading newspapers. In that moment, she could really see the brotherly similarity between them. They didn't look a whole lot alike, but their mannerisms were so similar and they just had the exact same confident, devil-may-care air.

When they heard her shuffle in, they both lifted their heads at the same time. "Hey," she said, sticking her hands in her pockets.

"Hey," Sam said back, folding up his newspaper.

Dean still had the newspaper in his hands, but he was looking at her closely. "How's the eye?" he asked gruffly.

"Little better," Sophie replied. "Got any more of that coffee anywhere?"

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Are fifteen-year-olds even allowed to drink coffee?"

Sophie crossed her arms over her chest. "We are when we're uprooted from reality and shoved into a world where demons, vampires, and unicorns exist."

Dean considered it. "Touché," he admitted, finally putting the newspaper down and standing up. "Although I'm not sure about unicorns." He led Sophie towards the kitchen. "I hope you like black, because that's all we have."

"He's lying," Sam called from the table. "There's sugar in the cabinet and milk in the fridge."

"Day one and he's babying you," Dean said, shaking his head and grinning slightly. "Guess he's already got a soft spot for you."

Sophie smiled. "What can I say, I'm impossible to hate."

"Give it time," Dean cautioned.

She kept grinning as they entered the kitchen. Dean grabbed a mug and started pouring coffee into it and Sophie jumped up onto the counter next to him, glad to finally be somewhat close to eye level with him. "Go ahead," he started sarcastically, "make yourself comfortable."

"Don't mind if I do," she replied with a soft grin. Dean found himself failing to keep a straight face, and he cracked a grin as he handed her the mug.

"Sam was right," he admitted. "Sugar's in the cabinet, milk's in the fridge."

"Actually, I drink it black," she said, taking a long sip of the coffee. "Mom always had it black, so when I was little I wanted to have it just like her. After a while I got over the fact that it didn't really taste good and just started liking it because she did."

"I remember that," Dean said, thinking back to Caroline. "We'd go to this little diner, and she always got black coffee."

"And you always got pie," Sophie said. Dean looked at her, surprised. Sophie shrugged. "My mom would tell me stories about you, once I got past the stage where I wanted to know you and into the stage where I wanted to know _about _you."

"Yeah?" Dean said, thinking _what the hell_ and jumping up on the counter to sit next to her. "What other stories did she tell you?"

Sophie took a sip of coffee, thoughtful. "Well, she said you thought her pet kitten was cute but you wouldn't admit it. And that she had never met anyone who made danger seem like a fun hobby. And that one time you took her to a drive-in movie but they kicked you out because a mom with her two kids complained about you making out the whole time."

Dean was affronted. "She told you that?"

Sophie immediately got defensive. "We were close."

Dean shrugged, still surprised. "Anything else?"

"I don't know," she sighed. "She always said she wished there was a way to tell you about me. But that there was no way to get in touch with you. That one day you were there and the next…gone."

Dean was quiet for a moment. "We were barely older than you, you know," he said, as if in explanation. "I was just…just a kid, hunting with my dad, looking after Sammy. Your mom, though…she was special. She was. Leaving her was the most I've ever been torn up about leaving anyone. Except…I don't know, except maybe you."

Sophie grinned. "Well, if it makes you feel any better, mom never seemed too bitter about it, or you."

Dean took a long gulp of coffee. "I'm glad," he finally said, not knowing what else to say.

"Well," she sighed, "now that we've had our daily dose of sentimentality along with our coffee, what's the plan?"

"The plan?" he asked.

"You know, the plan," Sophie continued. "What's the rest of my life going to look like?"

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Isn't that a little broad?"

"Well, I don't know, let's just start with today, then," she suggested.

"That's easy enough," Dean said, and he hopped off of the counter. "Today we're enrolling you at Lebanon Central High School, home of the buffalo."

Sophie frowned in disappointment. "Our mascot is the buffalo?"

"Don't worry, I hear the food is excellent," Dean placated.

"How am I going to get there?" she asked. "I seriously doubt this place is on the bus route."

"You'll have to drive. It'll be pretty easy to find you a car, there's a huge garage in here." At that, Sophie bit her lip. "What?" Dean asked.

"I don't know about that," she said, sounding timid.

Dean was shocked. "You don't know? What teenage girl doesn't want a free car?"

"I don't know, a teenage girl who doesn't know how to drive one? Or a teenage girl who isn't old enough to legally drive a car?"

"You don't know how to drive a car?" Dean asked, looking genuinely shocked.

"I'll refer back to the whole 'it's illegal' thing," she responded.

"You're going to learn sooner or later that legality isn't something I usually give a rat's ass about," Dean said. "We'll teach you how to drive, and then we'll get you an ID that says you're sixteen."

Sophie sighed. "A fake ID that says I'm sixteen. What fun is that? I'll be sixteen in a few months anyway. Aren't fake IDs supposed to at least make you twenty-one?"

Dean raised his eyebrows. "Hate to break it to you sweetheart, but you couldn't pass for twenty-one if you tried."

"Fine. Sixteen it is," Sophie grumbled. "I still get to keep my name, right?"

"For the most part," Dean said. "We'll have to change the last name. though. There's already a Sophie Gardner in the system, and I'm sure you leaving will create a little buzz in North Carolina for a while. We need to make sure you're as undetectable as possible."

Sophie nodded, taking another drink of her coffee. "So…not to sound all needy-long-lost-daughter or anything…but are you going to change it to Winchester?"

Dean looked at her thoughtfully. Even though he knew she was in fact his, it was still hard to believe it. She looked a lot like her mom. But there were some parts of her—the eyes, the spirit, the way she half-smiled—that were the telltale signs of Winchester blood. "Only if you want," he finally said.

She considered it. "I think…I think I'd like that. I mean…if I get all the lovely perks of having Winchester blood like frequent near-death experiences and socially awkward angels touching my soul, shouldn't I at least wear the name?"

"That's the spirit," Dean said sarcastically. "Now c'mon, we've got to talk to Sam. He's usually good at the whole planning things out thing."

"So you're not?" she asked, slipping off of the counter and bringing her coffee with her.

"I'm more of a take charge kind of guy," Dean admitted as they walked back to the big room where Sam was. He was still reading the paper, skimming quickly through lines.

When they walked in, Sam lifted his head. "Just to let you know, nothing seems to be happening right now in the papers. Looks like for the moment, the world is monster free."

"Perfect," Dean said, sliding into a seat at the table. "We need to get some fake papers for Soph, and then we need to enroll her in school, and then we need to teach her how to drive."

Sam put down the paper. "Why does she need a fake identity?"

"Every monster in the world could still be looking for her. It's safer we change her last name, maybe get her a haircut—"

"I never agreed to a haircut," Sophie snapped quickly, eyes wide.

"Okay, no need to make a big production out of it," Sam said. "I'll get you some fakes as soon as I can."

"Good," Dean said. "Make her sixteen years old."

"Done," Sam said.

"And make her last name Winchester," he added.

Sam didn't respond immediately. He looked closely at Dean, who stared back at him, as if challenging him. Then he glanced at Sophie. "Done," he finally said.

"Great," Dean said, clapping his hands together. "While we're waiting on those to get in, I'm teaching you how to drive."

"Right now?" Sophie asked, alarmed.

"Right now," Dean said.

"I…I don't know…"

"C'mon, it'll be fun," Dean said, grinning. Sam looked over at him, surprised. He hadn't seen his brother like this in, well, ever.

Sophie looked hesitant, her green eyes worried, her bottom lip trapped between her teeth. "Okay," she finally said, clearly not overjoyed.

"Alright then," Dean said, satisfied with himself. "Follow me."

Silently, Sophie sat her mug on the table next to Dean's and followed him out of the room.

Sophie was already lost by the time they made it to what seemed like an underground garage. She'd need help getting back, the bunker was so sprawling. When Dean turned on the lights in the garage, her mouth dropped open. "Woah."

There were probably ten or so cars in the garage, most old classics. Immediately, warning bells signaled in her head. "Are all of these manual?"

"Probably," Dean admitted. "I think there's one that's not, it's a little newer."

He walked through the line of cars until he saw the one he was looking for—a standard, granny-esque, boxy Volkswagen. "This is going to have to do."

"And it's not a stick shift?"

"No," Dean said, "but we're going to teach you to drive one of those, too."

"How far is the school from here?" Sophie suddenly asked. "I mean, if it's only a couple miles, I could walk."

Dean turned, now a little bit suspicious. "Why are you so afraid of learning how to drive? It's exciting, not scary."

Sophie looked uncomfortable, and she just shrugged.

Dean now knew something was up. He turned so that he completely faced Sophie, and he knew his instinct was right when he saw she was looking at her feet, a sure sign he'd stumbled across some sort of insecurity. "Alright, c'mon, tell me what's up," he said.

"I don't know, I just…I prefer to stay out of cars. Especially the front seat."

Dean was surprised. "But you've been in my car for hours and hours," he said.

"Half the time I was unconscious," she defended. "And usually I'm okay sitting in the back. But sometimes I have… um, well, panic attacks."

Dean's eyes narrowed. "You've got to know there's nothing to be afraid of."

"My mom died in a car accident," she said softly. "I was in the passenger seat when it happened. I just…every time I'm in a car, I feel like it could happen again."

Dean looked at her carefully, trying to figure out what to say. He was starting to see that this was becoming a recurring theme, Sophie saying something that stumped him and him trying to muster up the right words. "The difference this time," he said after a moment, "is that you will be in control of the car. Just you. No one else."

"My mom was in control," Sophie snapped. "It was the other driver that wasn't."

"You know what's just as dangerous as getting behind the wheel of a car when you're a safe driver?" Dean asked.

"What?"

"Walking outside," he said. "Anytime you do anything, there's a risk. For all you know, you could walk out the door and trip and break your neck. Anyone can be the victim of the whole wrong place, wrong time game. You just have to learn to go through each day as best as you possibly can, and then whatever happens after that…happens."

Sophie looked at him for a moment, and then she let out a big breath. "I guess I can't not drive for the rest of my life.

"That's the spirit," Dean said, grinning. "Now c'mon, we're burning daylight."

**Thanks for reading! More soon! ~ Lacey :)**


	19. Chapter 19: Make Her Strong

_Chapter 19: Make Her Strong_

"You didn't do that bad," Dean placated.

"I ran a red light and backed into a gigantic bush," Sophie grumbled as she stepped out of the car and angrily shut the door.

"It could've been worse. You could've hit a tree. Or a person," Dean tried, following behind her.

"It's okay, Dean, you can say it," Sophie sighed as they walked into the main room of the bunker. "I'm a terrible driver."

"You're a work in progress," he admitted. "A few more lessons with me and you'll be good as gold."

"Stop being so optimistic, it's not like you at all," she complained. "My confidence behind the wheel is abysmal."

"Lucky for you, I have enough confidence for the both of us," he said. "You'll get it."

"Whatever you say," she grumbled. "It's your funeral."

"Ah, a funeral," Dean said, sounding wistful. "Always wanted one of those."

Sophie turned to look at him like he was crazy. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but funerals are generally what you get when you die, right?"

Dean nodded. "I've died a few times," he said. "And not once have I gotten a funeral."

Sophie stared at him. He sounded genuinely offended. But that wasn't what shocked her. "You've died a few times," she deadpanned.

Dean grinned at her expression. "It pays to have an angel as your BFF."

"You're not kidding? You've literally died a few times," she said again.

"Most Winchesters have," Dean said nonchalantly. "Sam's taken the plunge a few times himself. Pretty sure I take the gold in most deaths, though. It's kind of why I'm not a fan of Tuesdays...well, never mind, it's a long story."

Sophie stared at him, looking thunderstruck. Then she suddenly just sat down at the table and put her head down. "What the hell is this place?" she yelled into the table, her voice muffled by her arms.

"We've been over this," Dean said, sitting down next to her. "It's our bunker, where we live when we're not—"

"Not _this_ place," Sophie exclaimed. "This _world_. It's all screwed up!"

Dean nodded. "Yeah. It is. But you'll get used to it, eventually."

"Is eventually, like, a month, or a year, or ten years?"

Dean grinned. "Probably about as long as it'll take you to learn to drive that car."

Sophie groaned. "So, never?"

Before Dean could respond, Sam walked in, holding a bag of takeout and a newspaper. "How was the driving practice?" he asked.

At that, Sophie stood up. "I'm going to go give myself a tour of this place."

As she strode out of the room, Dean called out, "Don't touch anything that looks too old or too lethal!"

When she was gone, Sam stood there, stunned. "Was it something I said?"

Dean gave a half grin. "Let's just say Soph's not exactly the epitome of a natural driver."

Sam set the food down on the table and pulled out a chair to sit in. "She's got your DNA, doesn't she? She'll get the hang of it in no time."

"The whole DNA argument isn't going to fly anymore, Sam, she doesn't know Zeppelin," Dean said, grabbing the bag and pulling out a container of Chinese food. "If the DNA argument was valid, she'd have every lyric of Zeppelin IV memorized backwards and forwards."

"Maybe the problem isn't that she doesn't know Zeppelin, but that you don't know Taylor Swift," Sam tried.

Dean glared as he grabbed a fork and opened the first box. "I know Taylor Swift. She's a teeny bopper, sickly sweet popstar who poses as a teeny bopper, sickly sweet country singer."

"She's not that bad, Dean," Sam tried.

"I didn't just hear you defending Taylor Swift," Dean replied in shock, a forkful of fried rice in his mouth.

Sam scrunched up his nose. "Dean, you're a father now. Isn't it time to learn to not talk with your mouth full."

"First you defend the popstar, now you're telling me how to live my life? Your uncle rights have been revoked, Sammy," Dean snapped, pulling another box of food towards him and opening it.

Sam rolled his eyes and grabbed his own container of food. "You're doing that thing where you become overly dramatic for no good reason."

"Defending Zeppelin is always a good reason," Dean grumbled. "Give me that newspaper."

"There's nothing in it," Sam said. "Or at least nothing that really concerns us."

"Come on, let me have look."

"No," Sam said. "Even if there was something in there, you promised to give up two weeks so we could try to figure out this whole Sophie thing."

"Fine," Dean said, shoving another forkful of food into his mouth out of frustration. "We need to get her new papers in soon so that she can start school."

"I'm already getting started on that," Sam said. "In the meantime, you can start training her."

"Training her?" Dean asked, shocked. "No way in hell."

"Not to be a hunter," Sam tried again. "Just to be someone who can survive as the daughter of a hunter. Teach her some basic defensive maneuvers, ways to kill your run of the mill ghost or demon or werewolf or vampire, how to avoid being killed by those same things. How to survive on her own if something were to happen to us."

"Is that all?" Dean asked sarcastically. "Should be easy enough to teach a lifetime of skills in two weeks to a girl who's probably never even seen a gun."

"Luckily for us," Sam said, cracking open his container of food, "Sophie seems to be more than up to the challenge."

"Yeah," Dean said, finally finding something he couldn't disagree with Sam about. "Yeah, she's tough."

"She's a Winchester," Sam said. "DNA might not make her love Zeppelin or have an affinity for weapons or be able to drive, but it'll sure as hell make her strong."

"Don't forget good looking," Dean chimed in.

"Dean," Sam reprimanded.

"What?" Dean replied in his most offended voice. "I can't take pride in the fact that I fathered a pretty daughter? I'm sorry that I got all the good genes and you're just bitter, Sam, but you don't need to be so sensitive."

Sam made a sound of disbelief. "Forget it," he said, going back to his food as he shook his head.

There was the sound of feet lightly padding on the ground, and then Sophie showed up, hands on her hips. "Is there a reason pretty much ever door in this entire place is locked?"

"Well, there's enough mojo in here to destroy the earth ten times over, so I'd say yes," Dean said. "But Sam and I can show you around sometime soon so you can get a feel for where everything is."

"Alright," she sighed. Then she glanced at the clock on the wall. "Jeez, it's already midnight?"

"Yeah, well, you slept for most of the day," Sam said. "And you and Dean were out for a while practicing driving."

She sighed. "Wow. I've only been awake for probably six hours and I'm already tired."

"It's probably best if you tried to sleep again for a bit now," Sam suggested. "That way when you wake up in a few hours you're back to a more regular routine."

"You sound like a mother," Dean chastised. "She can go to sleep when she damn well pleases."

Sophie grinned. "No, I like that he's taking on the role of mother hen. I mean, that practically makes us a traditional family, right?"

Her sarcasm was so heavy that Dean had to crack a grin. "Oh yeah, nothing nontraditional at all about two monster hunting brothers taking care of the long lost daughter of the older, much hotter brother while the younger, much less attractive brother tries to be the voice of reason."

"A girl can dream," Sophie sighed. She grabbed a container of takeout and a plastic fork. "After I eat this, I'm going to go back to bed for a few hours to try and get myself back on track. Then tomorrow, we need to go shopping."

"Shopping?" Dean repeated, saying the word as disdainfully as if he had said _dumpster-diving_.

"Yeah," Sophie said. "It's not like I need a whole new closet full of clothes, but a couple different outfits would be nice. Also, some shampoo and conditioner wouldn't kill anyone."

"We'll go into town tomorrow," Sam said. Sophie nodded and began to eat her food.

After a little bit more small talk, Sophie was finished, and she stood up from the table. "I'm going to go now," she said. "Thank you. Even for the driving lessons."

"You'll get it no time," Dean said.

"I'll just keep telling myself that," she sighed. "Goodnight."

"Night."

**Short little update. I know things are slower now, but Dean and Sophie have got to develop some sort of relationship outside of him saving her from monsters. But don't worry, there's a lot of action to come! Thanks as always for reading, and for your feedback! ~ Lacey :)**


	20. Chapter 20: A Badass in Pink

_Chapter 20: A Badass in Pink_

"For God's sake, would you quit it with all the pink?"

Sophie crossed her arms as she turned to look at Dean, looking mildly hurt. "It's one pink shirt and one pink scarf. I'm not exactly committing an atrocity of Barbie-like proportions."

They were in a thrift shop, where Sophie was trying to create a whole new wardrobe with a very limited amount of money. So far, she had a few pairs of jeans, some summer and winter tops, a couple jackets, some scarves and beanies, and a few pairs of shoes. She figured she'd do some online shopping to spare herself the awkwardness of getting stuff like bras and underwear.

But, of course, Dean felt personally offended at having to spend his hard-earned, pool-hustled money on any article of clothing that bore any sort of resemblance to the color pink.

"Fine. You have a two count limit on articles of clothing that are allowed to be pink. That's it. Anything else you can either pay for yourself or steal."

"You'd be okay with me stealing stuff?" Sophie asked skeptically, looking through some sweaters.

Dean shrugged. "Yeah, I guess, as long as it doesn't get you arrested. I don't have time to break you out."

Sophie grinned. "I think I just became a part of the world's most dysfunctional family."

"You don't know the half of it," Dean admitted, watching as she picked up a black leather jacket that had found its way into the sweater rack. "Now that, I wouldn't mind spending a few extra dollars on."

Sophie looked up, unsure. "I don't know, I've never really been able to pull off the whole badass thing."

"Get it," Dean said, grabbing it out of her hands and putting it into the cart. "Trust me, you'll be a badass, all in good time. And when you are, you need to look the part."

Sophie grinned mischievously. "I'll be a badass in pink."

"No," Dean said shortly, shaking his head. "Save the pink for when you're writing in your journal or painting your nails or…or… listening to Bieber."

She laughed, still scanning the sweaters. "I'll show you, Dean Winchester, that girls wearing pink can be badasses."

"I can hardly wait."

"Alright," Sophie sighed, withdrawing her hand from the rack of clothing. "I think I'm done here. The rest I can get online."

"Cool," Dean said, pushing the cart towards the front of the store. "I guess we'll stop by somewhere to get your shampoo or whatever."

She grinned as she followed him up to the front. "Well, thanks for getting all this stuff for me."

He looked at her. "Don't thank me for giving you clothes, Soph. You can thank me when I actually do something thank-worthy for you. Like forcibly make you listen to Zeppelin. Or at least Metallica. Or AC/DC."

"Why?" Sophie complained. "I like my naïve, uncultured little world of Taylor Swift and One Direction."

"Here, take my knife and stick it in my eye, I think that will hurt less than what you just said."

At that point, the cashier had finished ringing them up, and Dean coughed up the necessary cash as Sophie played with the mood rings on display. Five minutes later, they were walking out the door.

"I think we had a very successful outing," Sophie announced with a proud grin. "I'm glad you came with me."

"I'm glad I came, too," Dean admitted. "I mean, I hate shopping, but shopping with you wasn't so bad."

"Well, I'm glad I could convert you," Sophie laughed.

"Yeah, well, don't get used to it."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

They got into the Impala and drove off to their next destination, where Dean waited in the car as Sophie grabbed the necessary toiletries and quickly made her way in and out of the store. When she was done, she hauled her bag to the car and slid back in quickly. "Done?" Dean asked, looking up from his phone.

"Done," she nodded.

"Alright," Dean said, starting the car as she shut the door. She tossed the bag in the back and buckled her seat belt.

Sophie leaned back in her seat and looked over at Dean as he pulled out of the parking lot. "Dean?" she asked.

"Yeah?"

"You're going to teach me how to defend myself, right?"

He looked over at her, surprised. "Where's this coming from?"

She shrugged. "I just…I don't know. I want to make sure I'm not…I don't know, in the way, any more than I already—"

"Okay, stop," Dean said, not looking at her, instead focusing on the road. "Trust me, Sam and I thought a lot about what it'd mean to take you in. We talked and we fought and we argued like a couple of bitches and so don't think that we aren't fully aware of what we signed up for."

"I know, but…still, I want to be able to take care of myself. Or at least be able to stand a fighting chance if something were to happen and it was just me against a monster."

"Well," Dean said after a moment's thought. "We're going to give you a few lessons. But you're not getting the whole shebang, got it? You're not allowed to be a hunter. You can do whatever the hell you want to do, but you can't hunt. That is the only rule."

"Got it," Sophie said quickly. She paused, and then continued, "But…why?"

Dean looked frustrated. "Because. People who hunt die. Usually in very slow, painful ways. Plain and simple."

"You and Sam seem to be doing pretty well for yourselves," Sophie pointed out.

Dean gave her a stern look. "Remember when I told you Sam and I have both _actually _died? Numerous times? That wasn't a joke. We're just about as freakishly lucky as we are freakishly unlucky, and I will not gamble your life like I've gambled mine. That's not how this is going to work."

"Okay," Sophie said, her voice clearly indicating she was holding up the white flag. "I mean, I don't want to hunt. I want to be a lawyer. I just want to live long enough to be one."

Dean nodded, keeping his eyes on the road. A few moments later, he spoke without the biting edge in his voice. "So…a lawyer?"

"Yeah, I don't know, maybe," she sighed as she redid her ponytail. "Not one of those sellout corporate lawyers who burns everything down to the ground to make a bunch of money. I want to do something good to help people who can't help themselves. It's kind of idealistic, but…I don't know, I don't want to die without doing something good."

Dean gave a little grin. "It's not idealistic. It's admirable. You know, Sam was going to go to law school."

"Really?" Sophie asked, looking surprised. "You guys went to school?"

Dean laughed. "Me, no. No, I never really could do the whole classroom, textbooks, graduation thing. But Sam was such a little nerd, wanted to leave the hunting life behind so he could go to Stanford, which he did—"

"_Stanford_?" Sophie exclaimed, wide eyed. "He got into Stanford? Wow."

"Yeah, kid's smart, I'll give him that. But before he could actually go to law school…well, long story short, he came back to hunt with me."

"He left a safe, secure life as a law abiding citizen to hunt?" Sophie asked, surprised.

"It's a little more complicated than that," Dean admitted. "Like I said…long story. Like, really long."

Sophie nodded. "I'm starting to realize that."

At that point they had made it back to the bunker, and as Dean parked the car Sophie began to gather all of her bags of necessities and clothing. Sophie slid out of the door and carried her bags with her, looking at Dean over the top of the car. "You do realize that now that you've told me you like shopping with me, it's going to have to be a regular thing."

"Don't count on it."

"No, really. And you had such great fashion advice, too. I never would have looked twice at that leather jacket if you hadn't said anything."

"Don't push it, kid," Dean grumbled. Sophie just laughed.

They walked into the bunker, both in relatively good moods. When they made it to the main room, they were greeted by Sam, who had in his hands a thick manila file folder. "Good shopping day?" he asked.

Dean grumbled something about how he wasn't the one who shopped as Sophie said, "Yep! Very successful. Dean had a lovely time."

"Good," Sam said, looking amused. "I had a pretty successful day myself." He tossed the folder onto the table, and Dean grabbed it.

"Oh, sweet. All your files," he said, addressing Sophie as he flipped through it. "Birth certificate, driver's license, medical records, passports, speeding ticket—"

"How can I have a speeding ticket if I've never even driven a car before?" Sophie exclaimed.

"It just helps validate your age," Sam explained.

Sophie huffed and crossed her arms, but she didn't say anything else.

Dean finished looking through it. "Everything seems to check out to me," he said, tossing it down onto the table. "Guess someone's going to school."

"Yay."

Sam pulled another file out of his bag. "I took the liberty of looking up your school transcripts, so I could try to figure out where to place you grade-wise." He grinned at her. "You definitely don't take after Dean when it comes to academics."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Dean asked, offended.

"It means she was top of her class," Sam said, offering Dean the file. "You sure you're not _my _long lost daughter, Soph?"

"Fairly certain," she responded, grinning.

Dean was looking through the folder. "Who the hell needs Advanced Placement calculus in their life as a sophomore?"

"Not my smartest life choice," Sophie admitted.

Dean continued flipping through her records. "Advanced Latin. That will definitely come in handy."

Sophie snorted. "Doubt that. The only reason I took that was because it looks great on college applications. Dead languages aren't actually handy." Dean and Sam both gave grins, and Sophie immediately saw she was missing out on something. "What?"

"Latin's pretty damn important," Dean said. "Especially since you have to use it to exorcise demons."

"Oh," Sophie said, stunned. "Well. Of course. Duh."

"We'll probably have to teach you that," Sam said. "It's a useful thing to know."

"Cool. So we'll pencil my exorcism lesson in for right after my driving lesson? A typical day in the life of a typical teenage girl," Sophie said, her voice laced with sarcasm but her eyes bright with curiosity.

"Not before we get you signed up for school," Sam replied. "We should go there today. I bet it's still open."

Sophie sighed. "I hate new schools."

"Yeah, tell me about it," Sam replied. "I don't even know how many schools we went to growing up."

"Too many to count," Dean affirmed.

She sighed again. "Well, it's better than going back to the school Steve was sending me to."

"That private Catholic school?" Dean asked. "What, did the nuns slap the hell out of your wrists?"

"The school was fine. I learned a lot, and the nuns were adorable and sweet. But the students were obnoxious and entitled." She picked up her file and looked through it. "Luckily, they were too busy buying the newest iPhone to be anything other than just annoying."

"Well, fortunately for you, you'll be slumming it up in public school from here on out," Dean announced heartily, plopping down in a chair and grabbing a nearby newspaper, which Sam promptly yanked out of his grasp. "What the hell? Quit doing that!"

"No monster-hunting. You're filling out emergency contact forms for the school," Sam responded, slapping a few papers and a pen down in front of Dean. Begrudgingly, he grabbed them and began filling out information.

"Do I need to fill anything out?" Sophie asked, watching Dean scribble out of the corner of her eye.

"Not until you get there, probably. Usually they have some sort of honor code thing you have to read and sign, right?" Sam asked.

Dean made a sound that sounded half like he was choking and half like he was laughing. "Honor code," he scoffed under his breath.

Sophie, who had the feeling Dean had never adhered to any sort of code that he himself had not written, just grinned. "C'mon, Dean, can you imagine a public high school with no rules. It'd be anarchy."

"A little anarchy is good for the soul."

"I feel like that's something Hitler probably whispered to himself when he was feeling down," Sophie responded with a grin.

Dean set his papers down and looked up. "Alright, that's it, we're having another driving lesson."

"What?" Sophie replied quickly, the grin wiped away twice as quickly as it had arrived.

"You heard me. Garage. Now."

"But…no!"

Dean, who was already up out of his chair, shook his head. "Nope. It's time for you to learn how to drive. Properly. It's a valuable life skill."

"I'm going to kill someone, Dean!" Sophie argued.

"Only if you don't listen to me," he grumbled. "Now come on." He leaned over and grabbed her papers and the ones he had signed. "We'll go to the school and get you registered."

Sophie let out an exasperated groan, but nonetheless she stood up and followed him silently to the garage. There, he tossed her the keys, which she deftly caught as she gave him a scathing glare. "The blood's on your hands," she remarked.

"You're not going to kill anyone, Soph," Dean said. "Now c'mon, let's get this show on the road."

**Note: A lot of you have asked what season this story takes place in. Honestly, there is no particular season at which this takes place. The parameters for the story are thus: they're at the bunker, there's currently no overarching conflict involving Heaven, Hell or anything in between, and the boys are basically in this space where they're just hunting again. Also, Dean would have to be about 34 years old. Hope this helps with your visualization of where we are in the Supernatural timeline!**

**And how bout that mid-season finale? I actually really liked it; not a whole lot of action, but definitely a really good episode for development. Anyway, thanks for reading, as always! ~ Lacey :)**


	21. Chapter 21: Go Buffalo

_Chapter 21: Go Buffalo_

Knowing there was no way she was getting out of it, Sophie slid into the car and put the key in the ignition. Dean slid in next to her and closed the door. "Okay. First thing's first—"

"Put it in drive and go?"

"—buckle your seat belt," Dean said, giving her a look.

She cleared her throat and quickly buckled up. "Right. Okay. Check."

After a bit of coaching from Dean, Sophie managed to get the car out of the garage and on the road. She eventually was able to hit a bit of a rhythm, and as she drove down the road her knuckles turned white she was grasping the wheel so tightly.

Dean noticed this. "Okay, you need to relax," he reprimanded. "We're on a long, open road with no other cars in sight. You're good, and you need to relax."

Sophie bit back the retort boiling up in her throat and instead took a deep breath. "Fine."

"Relaxed people don't say 'fine'," Dean said, looking at her partly in frustration and partly in amusement. "Relaxed people say, 'Don't worry, Dean, I got this'."

"But I _don't _got this!" Sophie snapped. "I'm the sole operator of a four-wheeled machine of certain death!"

"Okay, see, that is the kind of talk that gets people killed on a highway," Dean reasoned.

"Alright, alright," she said, taking another deep breath and slowly loosening her grip on the steering wheel. After a few more seconds, and another deep breath, she said, mechanically, "Don't worry, Dean. I got this."

"There we go!" he said, cracking a grin. "Was that so hard?"

"Don't ask questions, I'm concentrating," she said through gritted teeth.

Dean found it incredibly difficult to resist laughing at her, but he knew more harm than good would come out of that. "So if I turned the radio on—"

"We die."

"Gotcha," Dean said, finding all of this incredibly entertaining. "Well, keep driving until you hit the next stop sign. Then turn left."

"Okay. Yeah. I can do that."

"You do remember how to work the brakes, right?" Dean asked, failing at holding his grin back.

"What did I say about asking questions?" she cried.

"Well we die if you don't know how to use the brakes," he pointed out.

She made an exasperated sound. "I know how to use the brakes, smartass."

"Relaxed people don't curse," he continued.

Sophie shot him a quick glare before turning her eyes back to the road. "You do realize that every time you open your mouth your chances of survival drop significantly, don't you?"

Dean finally let out a mild chuckle and sat back in his seat. "Alright. You win. Just…go the speed limit and if you're not sure what to do, ask."

It was quiet from there on out, and about two minutes later they pulled up at the stop sign. This was already going more smoothly than their first try at driving—she'd flown past the stop sign the first time. She tried to recall everything he'd told her to do, and so she turned on her turning signal as she gently slowed to a complete stop. When she saw the coast was clear, she made the turn.

"Alright! Progress!" Dean proclaimed.

Sophie couldn't help but grin. "Yeah. I guess so."

"See? Not so scary when you know what you're doing," he said, and he felt a little ember of warmth somewhere inside. He'd just taught his daughter how to drive a car. Never in his life did he think he'd be thinking those words. "Turn right at the next light and then the school should be a little ways on your right."

"Okay." She paused for a second, and then a look of horror dawned on her face. "Oh my God, when we get there I'm going to have to park."

Dean grinned. "Yes, you are."

"But—"

"No. No buts. You know how to do this. You just need to calm down and remember."

Sophie nodded, biting her lip nervously. Within seven minutes they had made it to the school, which looked about as dull and municipally-funded as any educational facility could. As she inched her way through the parking lot, she watched parking spot after parking spot pass her by as Dean observed her expectantly. Finally, he couldn't resist. "You're going to have to pick one eventually."

Sophie mumbled something under her breath that Dean couldn't quite make out, but it sounded scarily close to _buck off. _Amused, Dean sat back and watched as she finally slowed down, a target in mind. Painstakingly, she made a wide right before turning left into the parking spot, so slowly that it took a lot for Dean not to comment on it. To his surprise, however, after what felt like a lifetime, she managed to get the car entirely into the parking spot.

"I did it," she said in amazement.

Dean grinned. "Not yet. You've got to put it in park and turn the car off first." She did as he said, and then turned to look at him. "_Now _you did it," he said.

She just sat there, looking mildly bemused and yet incredibly proud of herself. Dean was struck yet again by the resemblance between her and her mother. He remembered Caroline, sixteen years before, trying desperately to uncork a bottle of wine she'd stolen from her mom's collection and looking exactly the same as Sophie did now when she had succeeded. That had been the moment when Dead had decided what he and Caroline had was more than a hunter's fling. Maybe it wasn't exactly love—after all, they were just kids—but it was something real.

Sophie looked up and smiled at him, and he grinned back. "Alright, hotshot, let's go."

Her smile dropped. "Can't I just wait here?"

"Yeah, no," Dean said shortly, opening his door. "I don't enter high schools willingly, so if I have to suffer through this, so do you."

Sophie huffed and got out of the car, tucking the keys in her pocket as she closed the door. "Let's just get this over with."

Together, they walked up to the school. It was midday on a Wednesday, so students could be seen scattered across the campus. Sophie felt uneasy. She'd never really fit in at any school she'd ever attended. Back when she went to the same school as Patrick, she'd at least had a friend, but even then there hadn't been a niche for her, no category in the social framework where she'd neatly fit into. She wasn't a jock, a queen bee, a nerd, a bum. Then at the Catholic school Steve had put her in, she was the weird girl who didn't seem to be super into religion but also didn't seem into the blatant rebellion against religion. She was just the quiet, smart, non-confrontational girl who usually sat in the back of the classroom.

And now, here she was at a new school, with no friends, and she knew she was doomed to another two and a half years of complete and utter social irrelevance.

They made their way into the front office and towards the front desk, where a pretty, cheery looking woman with curled black hair and a warm smile greeted them. "Good afternoon!" she said in a welcoming tone. Sophie glanced at her nameplate, which read Michelle Long. "How can I help you?"

Dean cleared his throat. "We're here to enroll her in school."

Michelle's smile faltered for half a second. "You guys just move into town?" she asked, surprised.

"Yeah," Dean said, offering Michelle a smile, which seemed to dazzle her. Sophie resisted rolling her eyes. "I mean, I know it's mid-November right now, but Sophie here is a bright kid and I know she'll be able to catch up with the rest of the class."

"Of course," Michelle said, her smile returned, this time with a bit of a flirtatious edge. "We just have some paperwork that needs to be filled out, proof of address, immunizations, stuff like that.

Dean held up the packet filled with Sophie's papers. "This should have everything you need in it," he said, laying it down in front of her.

Michelle took the packet and opened it up, glancing at the documents. "This looks like everything that we need. You'll need to come back tomorrow, Sophie, to speak with the guidance counselor and the principal, just to make sure everything's accounted for and that your schedule is all sorted out. But you should be able to start tomorrow!"

"Tomorrow?" Sophie asked, surprised. "That soon?"

Michelle grinned. "Sweetie, we're a public school. If you're zoned for this school and you have the proper documents, we are legally required to enroll you. So yes, tomorrow."

Sophie looked up at Dean, who, upon seeing her hesitant expression, reflexively jumped to her defense. "You know, Michelle, we actually are still getting settled, we probably won't have her start until next week."

Michelle looked like she wanted to object in some fashion, but then Dean flashed her another smile and she just nodded. "Of course. Just come by with the paperwork when you can and we'll schedule the meetings with the administration then."

"Great," Dean said.

"I'll just be a moment with those papers," she said, looking a bit flustered, and then stood up and left to go find the papers.

Sophie turned to Dean. "Incredible. Does that work every time?"

Dean grinned. "Pretty much."

Sophie shook her head. "Unbelievable."

"Don't be so judgmental, you've got that gift, too," Dean said, playing with the bobble head perched on the front desk.

"What?" Sophie replied, surprised. "No I don't."

"Sure you do. One look with those damn puppy eyes, and suddenly I'm agreeing to whatever the hell you want. It's ridiculous."

"Makes sense, I guess," Sophie sighed. "My puppy eyes are your puppy eyes. It's a curse."

"True," Dean agreed. "Probably the most dangerous weapon in the Winchester arsenal."

"I've seen the trunk of your car, and I sincerely doubt that."

"Damn straight," Dean replied as Michelle walked back to the front desk, a folder in her hands.

"Alright, you two!" she said cheerfully. Too cheerfully, Sophie noted. The kind of cheerful that oozes desperation. "Here're the papers. Have them back whenever you can! We look forward to welcoming a new buffalo to the pack!"

"Yeah, go buffalo!" Dean cheered derisively, grinning and nudging Sophie in the shoulder. His mockery was lost on Michelle, who clearly found his pseudo-enthusiasm highly attractive. It took every ounce of willpower in Sophie's body not to glare at him. Dean, however, was enjoying himself immensely. "You wouldn't happen to have any school shirts for sale, would you?" he asked Michelle. "Preferably one with a giant picture of a buffalo stamped across it?"

"We should probably go," Sophie cut in, trying not to sound too venomous. "Remember, we have to stop by the store to get your meds for that problem of yours, remember?"

Dean's grin fell straight off of his face, and he looked stricken. "What?"

"You know, that…" –Sophie falsely lowered her voice— "…performance anxiety problem."

Dean's eyes narrowed in defeat as all interest slowly dissipated from Michelle's face.

Sophie smiled at Michelle. "Well, we better get going. See you next week!" She turned to Dean with the same smile. "Go buffalo!"

* * *

As they walked out of the office, Sophie was grinning and Dean was frowning. "Admit it, I won that round."

"Performance anxiety problem," Dean grumbled. "Please. If that was a problem for me do you think you would be around to tell the tale?"

Sophie was still grinning. "I still won."

"I guess you did," Dean admitted, trying to decide if he was disconcerted, proud, or a little bit of both.

Sophie was about to say something else when a student brushed by her, knocking into her shoulder and pushing her backwards. Dean turned around and caught her by the shoulder, righting her. "Hey," he barked. "Watch where you're going."

The kid turned around, and Dean was annoyed to see he was a douchey looking jock with a lettered jacket and smoothed back brown hair. He looked like a Ken doll. He turned with a grin that made it seem he was about to retort with something like "whatever, bro," but then when he saw Sophie he did a double take. The grin turned slightly more wolfish, and Dean knew exactly what it was, that half-deceptively apologetic, half-charming smile designed to woo the nearest female. "I'm so sorry, I didn't see you there," he said, ignoring Dean completely. "You must be new here."

Dean expected to see the familiar look of irritation on Sophie's face, but was surprised and a little bit aggravated to see she looked bashful and little starstruck. "Yeah," she mumbled. "New. Or, I will be. Next week."

Ken Doll grinned again, a ravenous wolf, and Dean pushed back his distaste. "Hopefully I'll see you again. We probably will, it's a small school." He extended his hand. "I'm Mason, by the way."

"Sophie," she replied, taking his hand and shaking it, offering him a small grin.

Dean was starting to think maybe he wasn't going to like Sophie going to school after all.

**Here I give you my Christmas present. Until next time! ~ Lacey :)**


	22. Chapter 22: Little Lion

_Chapter 22: Little Lion_

A few days later, Sophie was already feeling like a bona fide Winchester. Her skills behind the wheel of a car were improving dramatically, and Dean had even said they might start working on a stick shift soon. She was getting used to a life of takeout and coffee, of listening to Sam and Dean talk about demons and angels and vampires and werewolves as if they were people you saw crossing the street.

But the one thing that really made Sophie feel like she was becoming a Winchester was that she was finally going to have her first training session.

They'd already given her Hunting 101, where she learned the basics about your garden variety monsters (she never thought she'd hear that term, garden variety monster) and how to kill them: behead vampires, use silver on werewolves and shapeshifters, holy water and dead languages and, if possible, demon or angel blades for demons, angel blades for angels. Sophie had originally objected to that. "Why would I need to kill an angel?" she had asked. Dean had simply given her a look and made her repeat how to kill one if necessary. So she did.

But today, she was going to put it all into action. Wield an actual weapon and defend herself. She'd never held a gun or a knife or anything of the sort in her life, and neither had she ever faced anyone in hand to hand combat, and the thought was pretty daunting. But Dean and Sam were adamant on it; if she was going to be a part of their crazy, dangerous life, however removed, she needed to be able to stand a fighting chance.

And so there she was, wearing a white tank top, denim jacket, and black pants, sitting on a tree stump outside of the bunker, waiting for Dean to meet her. She twirled a fallen leaf in her hands, thinking about school. She would be starting in the morning, and there was a knot in her stomach. She'd always been good at school, yeah, but that didn't mean she liked it. She was terrible at making friends.

She guessed she could add that to the short list of things she had in common with Dean.

She heard a crunch of leaves and her head shot up to see Dean approaching, a duffle bag in hand. "Relax, Twitchy, it's just me," he said.

"I am not twitchy," she mumbled.

"Yes, you are," Dean said, tossing the duffle bag onto the ground and leaning down to unzip it. "But twitchy is good. Twitchy keeps you on your toes." He pulled out a sheathed knife from the bag and tossed it to Sophie, who caught it deftly. "Good. Reflexes. We can work with that."

"Why the hell would you throw me a knife?" she asked, annoyed. "What if I _didn't _have reflexes? You could have killed me."

"Don't be such a diva, it's sheathed," Dean replied, standing back up. "Now go on, take it out."

Hesitantly, Sophie grabbed the hilt of the knife and pulled it out. She looked at it, in all of its sharpened glory. "I feel ridiculous," she complained.

Dean looked at her in disbelief. "I think you mean empowered."

"No, I mean ridiculous," she said. "You want to know the last thing I held in this hand? My hairbrush. And before that? A mascara wand. This is so… not me."

"Well, it's going to need to be you," Dean remarked. "So let's just jump right into it, alright? Now, come at me."

Sophie looked at him, half a grin on her face. "You're joking, right?"

"Do I look like I'm joking?"

"I mean, yeah. You just asked a fifteen-year-old girl to charge at you with a very large, very pointy knife. There's got to be a punch line there somewhere."

Dean rolled his eyes. "C'mon, Soph, take this seriously. I'm a demon, and that's a demon blade. I pose an imminent threat to your immortal soul. Protect yourself."

Sophie sighed, tightening her grip on the knife. She looked at Dean and tried to picture him as the possessed orderly in the hospital after the whole Sebastian ordeal, an evil monstrosity with black, empty eyes. Surprisingly for her, it wasn't that difficult. Not when every dream she'd had since discovering this new world had been plagued by every sort of monster. She tried to put herself back in that moment, when all she could feel was fear and the desire to not die.

She struck out at Dean, who blocked her attempt with ease. "Not bad," he said. "But too direct. I'm a demon. I've had years and years to anticipate the moves of humans. You need to surprise me." She stabbed at the air again, and Dean again was able to easily dodge. "Better, but not by much," he commented, a light in his eyes that Sophie had yet to see. This was what he loved, the fight. This was his life. "Surprise me. You're not going to win fights because you're in fighting shape. You're going to win because you're smarter than the other guy. So surprise me."

Sophie took a moment to regroup, staring at Dean in concentration. Weaknesses, she thought. What was his weakness. He was stronger than her, more experienced, smarter, quicker. What was his weakness? He had to have one, didn't he?

And then she knew.

Quickly, she aimed high, stabbing upwards towards the crook of his neck. As he lunged to defend himself, her left hand grabbed towards the waistband of his jeans, where she knew he always kept his gun. As he swatted the knife out of her hands, she grasped the handle of the gun and pulled it out, pointing it at him.

He stared at her in utter shock. They stood like that for a moment, Sophie holding the gun out with both hands unwaveringly, the knife lying forlornly on the ground.

And then Dean grinned as widely as he ever had. "Now _that's _what I'm talking about."

Sophie couldn't help but grin at his approval. "Yeah, well, your weakness was you knowing I'm weak and thinking I couldn't be anything but."

"Touché," Dean admitted. He extended his hand, and Sophie handed the gun back to him. "As clever as that was, you still need to be able to stab someone."

"This is super ineffective," she grumbled. "Let's say I was even remotely skilled at this. I can't just stab you."

"Trust me, the moment I feel like I'm actually in danger of being stabbed, we'll stop," Dean said.

And so they continued. After working with the knife they practiced hand to hand, and after that she got her first lesson with a gun. Sophie was genuinely surprised at her lack of awkwardness when it came to fighting. She was no Chuck Norris; she clearly had a ways to go with the whole training thing. But neither was she hopeless. She seemed to have a little bit of an affinity for defending herself, which Dean seemed to be very happy about. In fact, the first time she was able to cleanly shoot a beer can off of a tree branch, he beamed, looking like the proudest person in the world.

And for the first time, Sophie truly wanted to make him proud. Seeing him like this made her…happy.

* * *

A few hours later, they called it quits. Sophie was tired and in desperate need of a shower, but she felt good. More confident, more capable. She and Dean walked back into the bunker, laughing about some half-witted joke he'd made about hunting and buffalos. They were still laughing when they walked in to see Sam sitting at the kitchen table, who looked up at them in mild surprise. "Um, did you have a good time trying to kill each other?"

"Yep," Sophie said cheerfully. There was a slight bounce in her step. "Well, I'm gonna hit the showers. You remember how I like my pizza, right?"

"Pineapple and ham," Dean recalled, walking into the kitchen to grab a beer from the fridge.

"And extra cheese!" she added, bounding away to her room and closing the door.

Sam gave a perplexed, albeit amused, look at Dean. "Well I guess that went well."

"Yeah, man," Dean said, cracking open his beer and sitting down across from him. "She's actually not half bad. If I let her, she'd probably make a decent hunter."

At that, Sam narrowed his eyes. "But you won't let her, right?"

"Of course not, Sam," he said, taking a gulp of his drink. "There's no way in hell. She's fifteen, and by the looks of her transcripts, she's smarter than even you were at that age. She could go places. Hunting is not an option. I was just saying that she's got the natural ability."

"Yeah, well, don't get so eager about it," Sam said, his voice a little less harsh. "If you're eager about it, she'll be eager about it, and then she'll fight you on it."

"She gets that this is just for her own protection. She said she doesn't want to hunt," Dean said. "She wants to lead as normal a life as possible. Hell, she wants to go to law school, Sammy."

At that, Sam grinned. "Really?"

"Yeah. So stop worrying and let me have this one thing."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Sam asked, flipping through a booklet to find their favorite pizza place's number.

"It means that she's already more like you than she'll ever be like me. She's smart, and ambitious, her taste in music is terrible, and she has absolutely no appreciation for quality automobiles. The fact that she's naturally comfortable with a weapon or in a fight—that's all me. That's the one thing I get to say I gave her, except for my exceptional good looks. So just let me have it."

"Hey, you can have it," Sam conceded. "Just don't…encourage it. Being like you can be really good, Dean, but it can also be really, really bad."

"Yeah, I know that," Dean replied, annoyed. "Trust me, this isn't going to become some full-fledged hunter bootcamp. She's just gotta be ready for anything."

"Alright. Good," Sam said, grabbing his phone and punching in the number for the pizza place. "You know, maybe we should learn to cook something."

Dean looked at him like he'd just suggested they should learn how to clean public bathrooms. "Excuse me?"

"She's fifteen, Dean. Should she really just eat pizza, burgers, and Chinese food for the rest of her life?"

"We did and we turned out just fine," Dean defended.

"No, Dean, if we don't die of in a hail of bullets, we will from heart attacks," Sam concluded.

"You're forgetting I _do _know how to cook," Dean said defensively. "But I only do that when I feel like it. So if you want to go all domestic, by all means, go nuts. I'm not about to throw on an apron and make sure there's a pork roast in the oven every night. That's all you."

"It was just a suggestion," Sam grumbled, dialing the number and holding the phone up to his ear.

"It was a dumbass suggestion," Dean grumbled back. Sam looked ready to shoot back with a retort, but then the pizza place picked up and he begrudgingly placed their order.

About twenty minutes later, Sophie came out of her room, wet hair tied into a messy bun on the back of her head, wearing pink and yellow pajama pants and a gigantic gray T-shirt that Sam had given her. She had a bit of a spring in her step, and Dean recognized it instantly—the natural high that came from fighting, from being powerful. "Pizza here yet?" she asked.

"Should be soon," Dean said, not looking up from his newspaper.

Sam walked into the room, a navy blue backpack in his hands. When he saw Sophie, he tossed it to her, and she caught it. "Thought you might want this for school tomorrow," he said.

She frowned. "Right. School."

"Don't sound so excited," Sam said, sitting down across from Dean.

"I'm not _not _excited," she sighed, sitting down next to him. "I'm just…I don't know…apprehensive, I guess. It's a small school, everyone knows each other, and I…I don't know, it's the plight of every new kid. I'll get over it."

"You're friendly enough," Dean chimed in. "Don't see why you won't find a way in."

"I don't know, I suck at making friends," Sophie admitted. "People just don't make sense most of the time."

Dean looked up from his paper, eyeing her for a moment, and then glancing towards Sam. "Guess that's one more thing she got from me."

Sophie leaned back in her chair, annoyed. "Yeah, well, I didn't get it from my mom. She could strike up a conversation with the guy in front of her in the Starbucks line."

Dean grinned. "Yeah, she could. This one time, we were at this pet store getting food for her ridiculous cat, and she stood there and talked with the store manager for thirty minutes before remembering to actually ask for the food."

"Sounds like Mom," Sophie sighed. "So yeah, she could talk for hours, and yet I'm just constantly in awe of how disappointing most people are. It's a really bad quality to have, I think."

"Well, as long as you use that quality by not talking to that punk we ran into the last time we went to that school, I'm all for it," Dean mumbled.

Sophie glared at him. "You are _not _going to be the guy who disapproves of any and all potential boyfriends before they even have a chance."

"So he's a potential boyfriend, now?" Dean asked.

She made a frustrated sound. "No, that's not the point!"

"Look, I'm not going to be an asshole. But I was a high school aged boy once; I know how they work."

Sophie rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I know. That's how I came into being, remember?"

"Exactly my point! I refuse to learn that I am a father and a grandfather all within the span of a few months. So, preferably, no boys. Ever."

She could feel her annoyance slowly turn into anger. "Yeah. Sure. Okay, Dean. Because a boy saying hi to me in the hallway immediately means I'm destined to have his kid."

"I mean…."

Sam cleared his throat. "I'm just gonna go wait for the pizza…."

"No," Sophie said shortly, standing up. "Don't worry about it. I will. I can probably even do it without letting the pizza delivery guy impregnate me."

Dean immediately felt a pang of guilt. "No, Soph, don't, it's freezing outside—"

"I have a jacket," she replied swiftly, grabbing the wad of cash Sam had designated for the pizza off of the table and running quickly to her room, where she put on a light jacket and then began walking up the stairs to go outside.

"Soph, c'mon," Dean called up to her, but she had already slammed the door shut. He let out a pent up breath and sat back.

"You really had to lecture her on boys?" Sam asked dismissively. "Really?"

"Well, yeah," Dean replied. "Parents do that, right? Make sure kids don't get themselves into screwy situations?"

"Dean…," Sam started. "You care about her, and you want to do right by her, I get that. But…I don't think you're quite at that level where you have the authority to lecture her about her personal decisions."

Dean glared at him. "It's not like I'm trying to be some overprotective douchebag, Sam. I just really don't want to have to deal with all of those high school things like heartbreak and 'OMG I think he's cheating on me with Amber' and, I don't know, baby mama drama."

"She's fifteen," Sam said, as if that explained away all of Dean's worries.

"So? Fifteen becomes sixteen, which becomes seventeen, and then suddenly everything's out of control!"

"Look, I don't think it's anything to really make a big deal about," Sam reasoned. "It's going to be her first day at a new school. She's going to be trying to just make some friends. The other stuff will come later."

"Are you kidding?" Dean asked, affronted. "My daughter's a looker, Sam. It's not her fault; it's in her blood. I'm telling you, we're going to have trouble by January."

"Then wait till January to start being so overbearing," Sam said. "Because right now, you're just pushing her to do the exact opposite of whatever you say."

Dean was about to argue when he heard a screech come from above ground, one that sounded chillingly like that of a fifteen-year-old girl.

He and Sam exchanged a look, Dean feeling a bolt of terror hit him square in the chest, and then they both rushed towards the stairs.

* * *

When they made their way to the top, in record time, they heard Sophie practically yelling. "You can't do that! I almost had a heart attack! Sam and Dean are going to think I'm being murdered by the way I screamed! _No more appearing out of nowhere_!"

And then a very familiar voice responded. "Why are you still here, Dean's Daughter? I thought he decided to leave you with the man with the inordinately clean house?"

"It's Sophie, _Dean's Angel_, and yeah, he did. Then he changed his mind. So now that I'm here, there will be no more of this magically appearing crap." At that point, Dean and Sam burst out of the bunker and outside, where they saw Sophie standing with her arms crossed, fuming as a baffled Castiel stood across from her. When she saw them running out of the bunker, looking alarmed, she groaned. "See? What did I tell you?"

Dean looked at the angel in annoyance. "Cas, what the hell are you doing here?"

"Dean." Castiel straightened himself up, looking at Dean in relief. Clearly, confronting Sophie had been vexing for him. "I wanted to see how you and Sam were doing since abandoning your offspring with the husband of her late mother. Apparently, the plans changed."

Both Sam and Dean looked confused. "You just decided to…randomly drop in?" Sam asked.

"Correct," Castiel affirmed.

"So no one is in any danger, there's no imminent peril, no second apocalypse?" Dean asked.

"_Second _apocalypse?" Sophie chimed in.

They ignored her. "No," Cas said. "I simply wanted to check in and ensure that everything was okay. Your offspring was in terrible danger the last time I saw you."

"I have a name, and it's not _offspring_," Sophie grumbled, again ignored by the three people surrounding her.

"Yeah, well, my offspring is perfectly safe, Cas," Dean replied, annoyed. "Next time, could you maybe find another way to make your entrance? Possibly a way that doesn't make Sophie almost have an aneurism?"

"Well…how would you propose I make my entrance then?" Cas asked, confused.

"I don't know, Cas, be creative."

"Creative?"

Dean ignored him and turned to Sophie. "Go back inside, you look like you're about twenty seconds away from getting pneumonia."

"I'm fine," she said.

"Yeah, your blue lips say otherwise," Dean countered. "Go inside, I need to talk with Cas, anyway."

"I'll go with you," Sam said. "It's freezing out here."

She nodded and grumbled, making her way towards the door. "You better bring in the pizza as soon as it arrives," she snapped halfheartedly before descending back into the bunker, Sam close behind her.

Dean turned to Cas, who was watching as Sophie disappeared. "Your daughter reminds me of lion," he noted. "A little lion. Fierce, loyal, and ultimately harmless."

Dean looked at him like he was crazy. "Lions aren't harmless, Cas."

"They are to me," he said with a shrug.

Dean just shook his head. "Well, listen, Cas, there's something I've been meaning to ask you, anyway."

"Sure, Dean," Cas replied. "What is it?"

"Well, Sam and I are going to have to get back to hunting soon, and we're not bringing Sophie with us. It's too dangerous. So there's a chance she could be here by herself for extended periods of time, and I'd feel better about it if maybe you could drop in every once in a while when we're not there. You know, make sure she's alive, going to school, hasn't totaled the car, stuff like that."

Cas looked a little confused. "You want me to…babysit?"

Dean shrugged. "Sort of. It doesn't have to be every day, just whenever you can."

The angel looked a little bemused, but also a little happy. Clearly he enjoyed being trusted with something as important as Dean's daughter. "It would be no trouble."

"Great," Dean said, sounding relieved. "I just…there's no perfect way to do this, to be a hunter with a kid and have her still go to school and try to be normal. It's tough. But…this is the best I can come up with. And having you check on her, it would just give me and Sam a bit of peace of mind, you know?"

"Of course, Dean," Cas said. Then he gave a knowing smile. "I see that she means a great deal to the both of you. I will do whatever I can to make sure your little lion is safe."

Dean nodded. "Thanks, Cas. I owe you one."

"You will let me know when you and Sam leave to hunt? So that I can refrain from scaring her again."

"Sure. I'll…shoot up a prayer or something. Keep your Winchester radar on."

"I always do," Cas said, and then with a whooshing of wings, he was gone.

**Happy 2015! Here's a little New Year's present for you! Thanks for reading! ~ Lacey :)**


	23. Chapter 23: Just an Ordinary Civilian

_Chapter 23: Just an Ordinary Civilian_

The next morning, when Sophie dragged herself out of her room and into the kitchen, she wasn't surprised to see Sam was the only one awake.

"Morning," she yawned at him, stumbling to the coffee pot and grabbing a chipped mug out of the cabinet. She poured as much coffee as she could into the mug and made her way to the table, where Sam sat.

"Morning," he replied, looking up from his laptop. "Ready for school?"

She shrugged. "Ready as I'll ever be." She took a long sip of her coffee and then took a deep breath. "When are you and Dean hunting again?"

"We'll hold off for another week, make sure everything's situated at school," Sam said. "The world's pretty radio silent right now, anyway. The only potential case is in Washington, and it doesn't seem like much. If it gets any fishier we've got a few hunter friends we can call to take care of it."

Sophie nodded. "Okay. If…if you guys had to go, you could, you know. I wouldn't want you to not save the world on my account."

Sam laughed. "Trust me, Sophie. One more week of the Winchesters on vacation isn't going to send the world as we know it into a tailspin."

She grinned. "Okay. Good. I'm glad."

"Yeah," Sam said, grinning. "And hey, when we do start hunting again…if there's ever an emergency, and you need one of us, all you have to do is call."

Sophie nodded, and then she looked thoughtful. "Wait. I don't have a phone."

"Oh," Sam said. "Well, we'll fix that. Probably today."

"Okay," she said. She glanced at the lone clock on the wall. "Shoot, I need to go get dressed."

She grabbed her coffee and started gulping it down as she scurried off into her room, where she quickly opened the drawers of her dresser to reveal her sparse wardrobe. Mindlessly, she threw on a pair of jeans, some really trendy looking Keds she'd found for three dollars at the thrift store, a black long sleeved shirt, and an unbuttoned red plaid button down over top of it. She tied her hair into a ponytail at the top of her head and swiped a bit of mascara onto her lashes. After looking in the mirror and deciding she looked good enough, she grabbed her backpack, which she'd filled the night before with some pens, pencils, and notebooks. When Dean had asked what she was doing and she showed him her pile of school essentials, he had wordlessly pulled a pocket knife out of the breast pocket of his jacket and tossed it into her bag.

She quickly tossed the backpack onto her back and made her way back out into the kitchen. By that time, Dean was awake, shuffling through the kitchen in a white T-shirt and jeans, somehow managing to fit more coffee into a mug than Sophie had been able to. When he saw her, he grunted, "Morning."

"Astute observation," she replied, grinning as she washed out her now-empty coffee mug in the sink. He grumbled, clearly not in the mood to verbally parry with her at that moment, and she shifted the backpack from one shoulder to the other. "Well, I've got to leave now for school so that I have time for that meeting with the principal before class. Where are the keys?"

"Over on the table," Dean said, taking a long gulp of coffee. "You remember how to get there?"

"We've only practiced driving there seventeen times," Sophie replied sarcastically.

"So no, you don't."

She glared at him. "I'll bring a map."

"Am I supposed to go with you?" he asked after a moment. "To, I don't know, do parent stuff?"

Sophie shrugged. "I don't think so. The paperwork's in. I think I'd rather just go in and get it over with anyway."

"Alright. Well, good luck. We'll see you this afternoon then."

"Yep," Sophie said, turning around and swiping the keys off the table.

Sam stopped her before she could get into the garage. "Here," he said, placing a ten dollar bill in her hand. "For lunch."

"Right," she said. She'd forgotten about food in her haste. "Thanks."

"See you after school."

She nodded, tucking the money into her back pocket and grinning at him before quickly making her way into the garage, jumping into her car, shakily jamming the keys in the ignition, and cautiously making her way out onto the road and towards school.

* * *

"So, Miss Winchester," Principal Robert Grayling said, looking over the top of the papers in his hands to look at Sophie with his surprisingly warm hazel eyes, "you seem to have done very well for yourself at your previous schools."

Sophie nodded, not sure how to reply. Principal Grayling seemed like a nice enough guy, maybe early forties, tall and lanky, a picture of his three children and wife placed on his desk for everyone to see. He clearly was a people person, and Sophie was not, and he seemed to pick up on that.

"Straight A's, high test scores, spotless record. Your teachers have nothing but nice things to say about you. You're primed to succeed here, even if you are coming in a little late. I'm sure it's nothing you can't handle."

She nodded again.

Principal Grayling smiled at her kindly. "So why did you and your family move to Kansas? Did your mom and dad move for work?"

Sophie knew it was a test. How well could she articulate her family situation? How well was she situated in general? She nodded yet again. "The move was for work. It's just my dad, though. My dad and my uncle."

"Right, sorry, it said that in your file," he said. "So you live in Lebanon?"

Sophie was beginning to think this had to be a joke. "Yes. Don't most people here?"

Principal Grayling shook his head. "No, Lebanon has maybe a few hundred people living within the town limits. Most people just live in various other towns in the county, and their kids come here for school."

"Oh," Sophie said. "Right."

Principal Grayling gave her a kind smile. "Don't worry, I'm sure you'll learn all the ins and outs soon enough. So, here's your schedule, and a note signed by me for each of your teachers. They should be aware that you're coming. Please know if you ever need help with anything, you're more than welcome to stop by my office or anyone else's office here."

"Thank you," Sophie replied, taking her schedule from him and looking over it. Calculus, Latin, chemistry, British literature, world history, psychology, and gym. Manageable, she thought. Difficult, but manageable.

"Good luck, Sophie. I'm sure you'll do great," he said. She stood up, shook the hand he offered, and then turned around and walked out of his office.

She made her way into the hallway, immediately bombarded by students talking loudly and walking quickly to make it to their classes. She glanced at her schedule. Her first class was British lit in room 103. She looked up, trying to figure out which way to go.

The bell rang, and suddenly the hall began to clear out. She cursed under her breath, looking at her schedule and then back at the rooms. She was so screwed.

"Do you need some help?"

Sophie looked up to see a boy she'd never seen before looking down at her. He was tall, easily six feet, maybe taller, and he had the darkest blue eyes she'd ever seen. He was wearing jeans and a black jacket over a gray thermal, a black beanie pulled down over his head. A book was tucked under his arm.

She was so shocked at being directly addressed by anyone that she almost forgot to respond. "Yeah, um, I have British lit in room 103, and I have no idea where it is."

The boy grinned, a surprisingly wide, goofy grin, and pulled out the book he had shoved under his arm. _The Picture of Dorian Gray_ by Oscar Wilde. "That's where I'm headed," he said. "Feel free to tag along."

"Thanks," Sophie replied in relief. "You're a lifesaver."

"Nah, just an ordinary civilian, ma'am," he joked, putting on an oddly charming, if not slightly overwrought southern accent. "I take it you're new."

"Yeah," Sophie said. "I didn't think it'd be hard to navigate a school with just two buildings, but I was wrong."

"Give it a week and you'll be gold," he said. "Or, um, gray," he altered, pointing at his book. "Alright, ouch, that was the worst joke I've tried to make in months. I'm pretty terrible at trying to come up with jokes on the spot."

Sophie wasn't sure what to say to that, so she just nodded.

"I'm sorry, I didn't even ask you your name," he said, looking at her. "Clearly my hospitality skills are almost as good as my comedic skills."

She grinned. "I'm Sophie."

"Sophie," he repeated, considering it. "Very generic."

"Hey," she said, insulted.

"Hey, no worries. I'm in the same boat. I'm Jack. Jack Williams. I have the single most generic name you could ever wish upon a child."

"I'm guessing you mean right behind John Smith?"

"Well, that goes without saying."

Sophie found herself laughing a little. "Well, Jack Williams, exactly how late are we going to be to this class?"

He shrugged. "Well, seeing as it's the next classroom to the right, not very."

"Oh," she said as they walked up to a door labeled with a large 103. "Well, thanks," she said, reaching for the handle.

Jack's hand darted out and stopped her from opening the door. "So you're new."

"I believe we established that," Sophie responded.

"This is great," Jack said, almost to himself. "A new student. Hasn't happened in a while here. Very refreshing."

"Uh huh," Sophie said. "Can I go to class now?"

"Eat lunch with me," he said suddenly.

Sophie was taken aback. "What?"

He looked impatient. "Lunch, S, c'mon, keep up. Lunch with me. Well, me and my sister, Jamie, and probably her boyfriend Harry."

"Your sister?"

"Yeah, she's also my best friend. But, I mean, we know what it's like to be the new kids. Military brats," he explained. "So we have this thing where we always, I don't know, try to make new kids not feel like new kids. Being the new kid sucks."

"It does," Sophie agreed.

"So, lunch. We sit at the table in the cafeteria closest to the window that has this ugly buffalo painted on it."

Without waiting for her to respond, he opened the door to the classroom and walked in.

Baffled, Sophie grabbed the handle and followed him in.

As it turned out, British lit was Jack Williams' realm. He answered pretty much every question the teacher, Mrs. Ryan, asked, and he seemed to be like the only one in the class who had read even a paragraph of _The Picture of Dorian Gray_. That was, except for Sophie. She'd read it freshman year, just for fun, and a small part of her wanted to join in the conversation just to show Jack she knew about something he clearly was very passionate about. But new kids didn't join in class discussions, so she just sat back and let him talk. He was, if nothing else, incredibly interesting to listen to.

Mid-rant about the prominent theme of hedonism in the novel, Sophie became acutely aware of a pair of eyes on her. She glanced around and briefly made eye contact with the boy who'd ran into her on that day when she'd been there with Dean. Mason. Quickly, she tore her eyes away. She thought about how swiftly Dean had disliked him, and for a brief moment, she considered the fact that maybe his gut was usually pretty accurate and she should take that into account.

But then Mason shot her a smile, and she could feel a whole swarm of butterflies circling her stomach. She couldn't help it. Something about him seemed…normal. He was so stereotypically attractive it almost hurt: probably a rich football player, who had probably dated a rich cheerleader at some point in his life, and probably had a variety of normal, controllable, non-supernatural problems that could be fixed by normal, controllable, non-supernatural means. Something about that was so appealing to Sophie; she craved anything or anyone that was significantly less complicated than the rest of her life. And Mason seemed like he fit every parameter of her wish.

With five minutes left in the class, Mrs. Ryan paused her lecture on Dorian and walked back to the front of the room. "Alright class, I thought I'd take these last couple minutes to introduce you to a new student." Sophie suddenly wished she would just fall through the floor. "Sophie Winchester, if you could please come to the front so everyone can see you." Trying desperately to conceal the blush she was sure was creeping up onto her face, Sophie stood up and walked to the front of the class, aware of all the eyes on her. "Alright, Sophie," Mrs. Ryan said, not unkindly, "why don't you tell the class a bit about yourself. Where you used to live, your family, your interests."

Sophie looked uncertainly out onto a mostly disinterested class. She picked out Jack, who looked at her with that piteous _what are ya gonna do_ look, and Mason, who was just staring at her intently. She tried not to look at anyone as she spoke. "Um, I'm from North Carolina. I live with my dad and my uncle. Um…my interests?"

"Hobbies, sports, pastimes?" she coaxed.

"Um, well, I like reading. And…I can play piano." _Recently I've picked up monster-hunting, you know, just your standard vamp and demon killings._ "Um, and…I don' t know. That's kind of it."

"Well, if you like reading, this is the class to take. Have you ever read _The Picture of Dorian Gray_?"

Sophie nodded. "Last year."

Mrs. Ryan beamed, and Sophie could see Jack grin out of the corner of her eye. "Excellent. Next class, don't be shy; contribute to the discussion. That way it's more than just Jack and I talking in circles." She turned to address the rest of the class. "Alright, class, now that you know Sophie, don't be afraid to help her if she gets lost or needs to get some assignments down." Right at that moment, the bell rang, and the shuffling of students desperate to escape filled the room. "Alright, you guys should all be halfway done with the book by next class!" Mrs. Ryan called over the noise, and Sophie quickly made her way back to her desk, grabbed her backpack, and made a dash for the door.

She was just about to pull out her schedule to figure out where the hell she was supposed to go next when she saw that someone was standing in front of her. Mason.

"Sophie, hey," he said, grinning at her.

She grinned back nervously. "Um, hi. Mason, right?"

He nodded. "So, today's the first day, huh?"

"Yeah," she said. "Listen, I'd love to talk, really, but I don't want to be late to class twice in one day."

"Sure," he said, not looking deterred in the least. "Well, how about you eat lunch with me?"

It was hard for Sophie to keep her jaw from dropping. _Unbelievable, _she thought, shocked. Never before had she been asked to lunch, and now she got two invites in one day? Did she look different? Had she magically become a Victoria's Secret model over the course of a few months? Or maybe, this school and this town were so small that she was simply the newest object to ogle over. "I'm sorry, Mason, I kind of already have lunch plans. Maybe…maybe another time?"

She had expected either disappointment or a friendly acceptance of her refute from him, but the genuine annoyance that crossed his face surprised her. Like he was a king and she was his lowly subject, and how stupid of her to _deign _to turn down his invitation. "Yeah, sure. I'll let you get to your class then."

He was gone in the blink of an eye, and Sophie watched him leave. _Asshole_, was the first thought that formed in her head. Then she thought about the smile he'd given her earlier and she wondered if maybe she'd misinterpreted his body language.

Deciding that she needed to focus on navigating the school instead of overanalyzing a boy she didn't even know, she quickly glanced at her schedule, looked down the hall, and made her way to her next class.

**A shorter update, I know, but I wanted to give you guys something instead of nothing! Until next time! ~ Lacey :)**


	24. Chapter 24: Ready for a Fight

_Chapter 24: Ready for a Fight_

The rest of the morning was exactly like the beginning of the day, except with a lack of students coming up to Sophie attempting to make conversation. Nearly every class included an embarrassing mentioning of her and an awkward introduction in which she repeated the same statement ("North Carolina…dad, uncle…reading, piano…."). Her teachers were nice for the most part, and some asked her to stay after class so that she could get some catch-up assignments and textbooks. She had a feeling she was going to love British lit, hate calculus, enjoy world history, tolerate Latin, and sleep through psychology.

Now she just had to make it through lunch.

The student ID card that she'd received that morning had lunches programmed into it, and so when she made it to the cafeteria she swiped the card, put food onto her tray as quickly as possible, and then looked around for the window with the giant buffalo painted on it.

It was easy to find, and there, as promised, sat Jack, along with a girl that looked remarkably like him and another boy who looked like he'd just stepped out of a Sports Illustrated magazine.

As Sophie neared, Jack saw her and waved her over to the table. She walked over to them, feeling intrusive. "Hey, S," Jack said brightly. He'd taken off his beanie, revealing a short crew cut of blonde-brown hair, and he had a lunch consisting of what appeared to be a turkey sandwich and chocolate milk. Next to his tray, which had yet to be touched, he held a cracked open book. Sophie glanced at the title.

"_Anna Karenina_?" she said in surprise as she set her tray down and slid into the seat next to him.

He grinned. "I'm making my way through as many classics as I can stand," he explained. "I thought I'd hate it, but it's actually not half bad." He dog-eared the page and closed it. "Alright. Jamie, Harry, this is Sophie. She's new."

The girl, Jamie, smiled. She was pretty, with the same dark blue eyes as Jack and a short bob of sandy blonde-brown hair that stopped just above her shoulders. "Hey," she said with a smile. "Nice to meet you."

The boy, Harry, looked distracted, looking at a stapled packet of paper in his hands. He was tall and muscular, built like a particularly formidable football player, maybe a fullback, and he was wearing a Kansas City Chiefs hoodie. Sophie thought he was attractive, if you were into the huge brawny type. He had flawless brown skin and shockingly pretty hazel eyes, and a bit of a scruffy five o'clock shadow. He glanced up for a brief moment. "Nice to meet you, too. Sorry, I'm sort of cramming for a chemistry test."

She grinned. "Understood. Pretend I'm invisible."

He went back to mumbling to himself and flipping through his packet, and Jack opened up his chocolate milk. "Well, I don't know why you waste your time with that class. Anything worth learning you can find in a good book."

"Stop pretending you're Charles Dickens, Jack," Jamie said, not unkindly.

"I'm just saying, all of the important things in life are defined by the human experience, which can be touched upon in literature and the arts, not scientific textbooks," he said, taking a drink of his chocolate milk.

Harry looked up, annoyed. "Dude. You have the same test next period. You could at least pretend to care about any of your grades besides Brit lit," he said.

"Hey, I cared about my grade last year in American lit," Jack said. Then he simply just shrugged and finally picked up his sandwich. "We can't all be Ivy League bound like you, Harry. So I figure, why bother with the classes I couldn't care less about."

"Because Mom and Dad won't keep buying you books if you fail chemistry," Jamie remarked, grinning as she took a bite out of a carrot stick.

"I won't fail," Jack said. "I just won't get an A. Or a B. All bets are on a C this semester."

"Well then you keep digging your own grave _silently_ while I keep studying for this test, alright?" Harry grumbled.

Jamie rubbed his shoulder affectionately, and Sophie had the feeling they'd been together for a while. "You'll do fine, Harry, you always do. Chem's your second best subject, anyway."

"What's your first?" Sophie asked.

"Calculus," he answered. "But I'm taking Calc III now and it's not even challenging anymore."

Jack rolled his eyes. "Always humble, this one," he said. "Meanwhile I'm over here and I can't even get through Algebra II without wholeheartedly wishing I could use my calculator to kill myself."

"Where there's a will, there's a way," Sophie offered, eliciting a grin from Jack.

"I'll just have to try harder next time," he said.

Sophie grinned and then picked up the apple on her tray, taking a bite out of it as Jamie glanced at her phone. "Hey, Sophie, you said you live with your dad and uncle, right?"

Sophie swallowed her bite. "How did you—"

"I think we're in the same world history class, with Dr. Stowe. He made you do that introduction to the class."

"Oh, right. Well, yeah, I do."

"Must be nice, being the only girl in the house," she sighed.

"Do you have sisters?" Sophie asked.

Jack snorted, and Sophie looked over at him. "So. Many. Sisters."

"We're the youngest of eleven. We're twins," Jamie explained. "And Jack's the only boy."

Sophie's eyes widened. "You're joking."

"Sadly, no," Jack sighed. "It's pretty tragic. I got dressed up like a life size Barbie until I was eight and I'd be lying if I said lipstick has never graced this mouth."

"Thank God your dad was military, otherwise you'd be prancing around Broadway in a tutu singing show tunes," Harry chimed in.

"That sentence was filled with so many stereotypes I don't even know where to begin chastising you," Jamie said, giving him a half-hearted glare.

"Hey, I'm black," Harry protested. "I get to make as many stereotypes as I want."

"Half-black," Jack corrected. "Don't flatter yourself, my friend." He turned to Sophie. "Seriously, it must've been wonderful being an only child."

She grinned. "My mom was my best friend. It was very _Gilmore Girls_. So I didn't mind being an only child."

"I thought you said you lived with your dad and uncle?" Jamie asked.

Sophie nodded. "Right. Yeah, my mom died in a car crash a few years ago, so I'm living with them now."

Jamie looked apologetic. "I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have pried."

Sophie shook her head. "Oh, God, no you're fine. It's way in the past now. Mainly it's just been a whole new experience, living with two grown men, brothers, as opposed to one woman. It's…kind of entertaining, to be honest."

"I bet," she said. "I'd kill to live with guys. Girls can be really annoying, you know? That's why when our oldest sisters started marrying and having kids, the ones who had boys were stoked. It's a whole new ball game."

Sophie laughed. "How old is your oldest sister?"

"We're all spaced apart two years," Jack cut in. "So Annie's, like, what thirty-six? Who even knows anymore, she got married to Greg ten years ago and they have three kids."

Harry piped up, not even looking at them, eyes still trained on his chem packet. "Annabel, Bethany, Cassandra, Dana, Elodie, Felicity, Guinevere, Haley, Isabelle, Jamie, and Jack."

Sophie looked at him surprised. "Wow. That's impressive."

"It's kind of this game we play," Jamie explained, grinning at Harry, who had gone back to studying. "If anyone mentions one of our siblings other than me or Jack, we have to go through the whole list of them in alphabetical order starting from the one who was mentioned. Because, you know, our parents were super creative and just went down the alphabet when naming us."

Sophie laughed. "So, if I said something about, what was her name, Haley, then—"

"Haley, Isabelle, Jamie, Jack, Annabel, Bethany, Cassandra, Dana, Elodie, Felicity, Guinevere," Jack chimed.

Sophie laughed again. "That's awesome."

The rest of lunch went by quickly, and Sophie was surprised at how easy Jack, Jamie, and Harry were to talk to. She had never made friends easily, and after losing Patrick so swiftly and brutally, she had doubted she'd make a single friend ever again. And while these three were hardly best friends yet, she could see herself fitting into their little dynamic.

Her mind floated briefly towards Sam and Dean. How did a normal life play into the severely abnormal life she led with them?

But then the bell rang for lunch to end, and the thought was banished from her mind as they cleared their table and headed off to their next classes.

* * *

The next class was uneventful. Sophie was in the same chemistry class as Jack and Harry, but since she was new she didn't have to take the test. She sat in the back with the teacher, Mr. Henry, and discussed a catch-up schedule while everyone else struggled to balance equations. Jack was the first student done, turning in his test with fifteen minutes left to go. When the bell rang and students hastened to finish the last couple of questions, Sophie grabbed her backpack to leave and suddenly Jack was right there.

"What's your next class?" he asked as they exited the room.

"Gym," Sophie replied.

"Well, would you look at that, me too," he said jokingly. "I mean, it's not that strange, half the school has the same schedule it's so damned small, but still. You'll probably like gym, you look athletic." Suddenly, he looked a little shocked at himself. "Uh, not that athletic means I think you look good, I mean, good is what you look, but not like, um…."

For the first time that day, Sophie really laughed. And not the polite, conversational laughter that was sometimes required in awkward introductions. It was a genuine, heartfelt laugh. "I know what you mean, Jack," she said. "I used to run a lot with my mom. We'd go on jogs every morning. Kept us young, she'd say." Sophie grinned at the memory. "So yeah, maybe I'm a little athletic. Just as long as it's not basketball. I'm terrible at basketball."

Jack grinned, clearly glad to be off the hook. "Well, you're in luck. Basketball was the first unit. We're into volleyball now."

"Good. Volleyball, I can handle," Sophie said. "What about you? Are you athletic?"

Jack led them out of the school building and across a poorly manicured quad towards a rundown gym. "I'm reluctantly athletic," he admitted. "My dad's big on fitness. Makes sense, since he was Marine Corps. And as the only son…well, I got all of his attention, you know? So I work out, and I run, and stay healthy. I'm not much for sports though."

Sophie nodded. "Right there with you on that one."

The made their way to the entrance of the gym, and as Jack's hand grasped the handle of the door a voice rang out behind them.

"So I guess I see what was so important you had to skip lunch with me."

Sophie and Jack turned around. She was surprised to see Mason, the same grin on his face that always seemed to be there. She was starting to realize him grinning at her hadn't been all that special. It was the same grin for everything; for flirting, for annoyance, for hating, for anger. She glanced at Jack and saw, for the first time, an unfriendly look on his face. His eyes were narrowed and his lips were pressed into a thin line.

Mason waltzed up to them. "Really think it's a smart idea to ditch me for freakin' Ernest Hemingway, here?"

For the first time, Sophie didn't feel butterflies when she saw him. She felt duped, and angry. "Judging by the way you act like the biggest high school cliché in human history, I think it's a smart idea to ditch you for anyone."

Jack, who clearly had been expecting to be left for Mason, turned to give her a surprised, appreciative grin.

Mason, however, was not pleased. The smile dropped off his face, the act dropped. "It's your first day, so I'm going to pretend like you didn't just ask to be on my bad side."

Sophie rolled her eyes. "First day or last, Mason, I'm not going to be interested in being on your good side. Plain and simple."

Mason's eyes narrowed. "You're asking for a really tough couple of years here, Winchester."

She thought about the training with Dean, about the beer can she was able to pick off of a tree branch. This time, it was her turn to grin. "Looking forward to it."

She turned around, grabbed the door handle, and quickly stepped through it, Jack one step behind her.

Before they made it into the actual gymnasium, Jack pulled her aside into a hallway, waiting for Mason to pass by into the gym before talking. "You know Mason Anderson?"

"We've met. Briefly. He was…I don't know, maybe _charming _is the word."

"Yeah," Jack scoffed. "Charming because it's his goal to bang every girl in this school."

She raised an eyebrow. "I doubt it's that extreme."

"No, it is. And we…I… we hate Mason."

"We?" Sophie asked. "Meaning, you and Jamie and Harry?"

Jack nodded. "Mason and Jamie…had a thing. I hated it then, but it was Jamie and I trusted her judgment. But the longer it went on, the more I realized he was being a total dick to her, and she knew it, too, and eventually it ended. But it was ugly. Like, really, really ugly. And Mason hasn't really forgotten that. And he's going to really hate it that you're bailing on him to hang out with us."

Less than a day after going to a new school and Sophie was already involved in a turf war. For some reason, it rejuvenated her. This was a conflict that didn't involve vampires or demons or anything else of the supernatural variety; this was something she could conquer. This was her territory. "Well, that's his problem. I don't know him. He doesn't have any power over me."

Jack grinned in a way that told Sophie she didn't know half of what she was getting into. "Mason's something else, S," he said. "Just watch your back, okay? I mean, it's not like he's going to shank you with a machete on the way to class, but he has other ways of making life here suck for you."

"I can handle Mason," Sophie said. "What I can't handle is being late to another class. So come on."

She turned away from Jack and made her way towards the gym.

Sophie Gardner would've been terrified of Mason, of being more than just an insignificant blip on the school's social radar.

Sophie Winchester, however, was ready for a fight.

* * *

Later that day, when she got back to the bunker, both Sam and Dean were waiting for her. When she walked down the stairs into the main room, she saw Sam at his laptop and Dean standing behind him looking over his shoulder. As she walked down the stairs and they turned to look at her.

"Hey!" Sam said cheerfully. "How was school?"

"Well," she sighed, reaching the bottom of the stairs and tossing her backpack onto the table, "I appear to have already made a mortal enemy."

"That's my girl," Dean said, not looking away from Sam's laptop. "Who is it? Cheerleading captain?"

She sat down at the table, unzipped her backpack, and pulled a water bottle out of it. "Not exactly," she said, unscrewing the lid of the bottle. "Remember Mason?"

At that, Dean lifted his head and narrowed his eyes. "Mason. You mean the douchebag from last week Mason?"

"That would be the one," Sophie said, taking a sip.

Dean straightened himself. "What'd he do?" he asked.

"Nothing, really," Sophie sighed. "He asked me to eat lunch with him, and I said no because I'd already told this other guy I'd eat with him and his sister, but apparently, this other guy's sister is Mason's ex, and so they hate each other, and then he came up to me and basically told me I had to choose between them, and I pretty much told him he was being a whiny bitch, and now he's pissed that I bailed on him and he's vowed to make my high school experience a living hell."

Dean and Sam just stared at her.

"I know," she said, taking another sip of water. "It's crazy."

"You were there for maybe six hours," Sam said, stunned. "How did you get involved in so much drama in _six hours_?"

"It's not my fault," she exclaimed. "I just told him I didn't want to eat lunch with him, and you would've thought I'd stood him up to prom or something. But I guess the fact that I was eating with his ex and his nemesis didn't really help."

"His ex and his nemesis," Dean repeated, just as shocked as Sam. "Who are these guys?"

"Jack and Jamie," Sophie said. "They're twins, and best friends. They're military brats and have been to a lot of different schools, and so when Jack saw me lost in the hallway he sort of took pity on me and asked if I wanted to sit with them at lunch. And he was nice, so I said I would, and when Mason asked later I had to turn him down, and well, you know the rest."

Dean just shook his head. "High school's changed a whole damn lot since the brief time I was there."

"I'm going to have to agree with Dean on this one," Sam said.

"Well, I don't really think this is normal either," Sophie grumbled, leaning back in her chair. "All I did was get lost on the way to Brit lit and get helped by the wrong guy. But now I'm in it, and I'm not going to let Mason get his rocks off by walking all over me."

"Spoken like a true Winchester," Dean said, grinning slightly. Then his grin fell. "Just…really, don't let him walk all over you, okay?"

"Yeah, if he gets to be too much, you call us," Sam said. "We'll sort him out."

"And by sort him out, we're talking castration," Dean added.

Sophie grinned. "You two like me, don't you?"

Dean walked by her and ruffled her hair. "Don't let it get to your head, kid," he said, and then he vanished into the kitchen.

She smoothed out her hair and looked up at Sam, who was grinning. "What?" she asked.

"I don't know," Sam said. "It's just different, seeing him happy."

Sophie smiled, looking back behind her, at the door Dean had disappeared behind. "I'm glad."

**As always, thanks for reading. I forever appreciate your feedback. More to come soon! ~ Lacey :)**


	25. Chapter 25: Good Luck With Your Monster

_Chapter 25: Good Luck With Your Monster_

The first week at school went by so quickly that Sophie wasn't even entirely sure that it happened.

Other than that first day, she hadn't spoken a word to Mason, and she was beginning to see that whatever feud going on between them was shaping up to be more of a marathon than a sprint. She didn't care; she'd be ready for whatever, whenever it may come.

In the meantime, she was finding that she really enjoyed the company of Jack, Jamie, and Harry. They were lighthearted and hilarious and intelligent, qualities Sophie had always appreciated in friends. They seemed more than willing to welcome her into their little circle, and Sophie couldn't believe she'd managed to actually make not just one, but three friends.

Everything seemed to be going fairly well. She was already on track in each of her classes, and seemed to be settling into the routine of things easily. She woke up, went to school, came home, did her homework, trained with Dean or Sam, ate dinner, had free time to read or watch a movie, and then went to bed. It was like clockwork, almost too much so, but it was nice to have a sense of stability to hold onto. Which, she speculated, was probably what Sam and Dean had wanted.

That Friday afternoon, she was sitting at the table trying to teach herself all of the rules of derivatives, seeing as her teacher had been hopeless at trying to teach it during the actual class. She was just about to give up when Sam walked into the room, sat down right next to her, and said, without preamble, "Dean and I have a case."

Sophie looked up and put her pencil down. "Oh."

"It's in Missouri," he continued, as if placating her. "So it's not far at all. And it's a baby case, textbook ghost haunting. Should take us a couple of days at the most. We just thought it'd be good to go back in small, make sure everything's good with you here, alone."

Sophie grinned at him. "You know you and Dean don't need to only take small jobs that are close to the bunker," she said. "You're hunters, that's your life. Trust me, I'll be fine here. This is the safest place anyone could possibly live."

"We know," Sam replied, nodding. "But for the first job since bringing you here, we want to keep it small, just in case."

"Well, it's all good with me," she said. She paused for a moment, looked down at her homework, and then looked back up at Sam. "What's the case?"

If he was surprised or unhappy that she showed interest in the hunt, he didn't show it. "A couple moved into a house and the husband was found dead one day later, apparently from falling off the second floor balcony. But the wife is swearing he didn't fall, she's saying something pushed him. Dean and I did a little digging, and there was a big murder in the house a few years back. All signs point towards a ghost."

Sophie nodded. "Right. So, you get rid of a ghost by…oh, shoot, wait, don't tell me, I remember this..." Sam couldn't help but grin, and he was about to tell her when her head shot up. "Wait, I remember. You have to find the remains, all of them, and salt and burn them."

"Right," Sam said. "And how do you keep one at bay?"

"Salt," Sophie said. "Or iron."

"Fast learner," Sam noted, feeling a little bit of the pride that he knew Dean had felt upon learning she wasn't a shabby fighter.

She grinned. "Yeah, if only I could pick up calculus as quickly as I do monster killing."

"You know, if you ever need homework help, just ask," Sam said. "I happen to be pretty good at the whole school thing."

"Yeah, Stanford," Sophie said admiringly. "Dean told me."

"Yeah," Sam said, heaving a big breath. "Good times. I was pre-law, but I took a couple calc classes, and I wasn't half bad. So seriously, you need help, just ask."

Sophie nodded, looking down at her homework again. "Well, actually, if you're offering…these stupid derivatives keep stumping me."

"Derivatives I can do," Sam proclaimed confidently.

For the next thirty minutes Sam helped Sophie with her homework, and when they were done she was surprised that she actually felt like she had a good handle on the material. Sam helped make some of it make sense. Sophie briefly considered asking him why he'd dropped out of Stanford to hunt if he was such a good student, but she had a feeling that there was more to that story than anyone cared to rehash, so she kept quiet.

A little while later, there was a shuffle at the top of the stairs, and Sophie looked up to see Dean with bags hanging off of his arms, looking flustered and annoyed. As he walked down, he saw Sophie and Sam at the table. "Oh, so you're study buddies now while I do all the heavy lifting," he ranted as he stepped off the stairs. "That's adorable."

"You want to be the one doing calculus, Dean?" Sam asked, amused.

"No, but I don't want to be the one grocery shopping," he snapped in response. "I don't grocery shop."

"Grocery shopping?" Sophie asked in surprise. "You guys actually eat real food?"

"No," Dean said. "But if we're going to be leaving you here, we sort of have to make sure you don't starve."

"How considerate of you," Sophie remarked.

Dean ignored her sarcasm. "I got stuff that should be easy enough to make. Velveeta, cereal, frozen waffles, stuff like that."

"Did you get anything with any nutritional value, at all?" Sam asked, exasperated.

Dean set all of the bags on the table, searched through them for a moment, and then emerged with a jar of applesauce. "Does this do it for you, Sammy?"

Sam just gave Dean a look, one that clearly communicated the fact that no, the applesauce did not satisfy Sam's parameters for nutritious food, and Dean merely shrugged and stuffed it back into the bag.

Sophie watched the whole scene in amusement. "Lucky for you, I love Velveeta, cereal, frozen waffles, and applesauce. I mean, so do toddlers, but that might just be a coincidence."

"Sam told you we might be leaving tomorrow, right?" Dean asked, starting to unpack the bags. Sophie looked at the contents, trying not to laugh at the boxes of Poptarts and Pizza Rolls.

"Yep," she said, closing up her textbook and putting her homework back in its folder. "Happy hunting."

"So you're…good? On your own?"

"Dean," Sophie said, annoyed. "Last time I checked, I was fifteen, not five."

"Alright," he replied defensively. "Got it, you're good."

She sighed. "No, sorry, I appreciate you asking. But I mean that was the deal from the start, right? I stay, you hunt. Besides, I don't mind being alone. Beats being with Steve, or being dead."

"Amen," Dean proclaimed.

"Plus I'll have time to get to my reading list. This place has, like, every book in the world, and I want to read them all."

Dean just stared at her. "I'm still not entirely convinced you're my kid and not Sam's."

Sophie turned to look at Sam. "Did you ever sleep with a woman named Caroline Gardner?"

Sam grinned. "I would've been about thirteen at the time, so no."

She looked back at Dean. "Case closed."

Dean just rolled his eyes and started grabbing the food that needed to go into the fridge, carrying it into the kitchen.

Sam laughed as Dean disappeared. "You know, you may have somehow managed to get my brain, but you've got his sense of humor."

"I prefer to think I have my own sense of humor," Sophie said.

"Maybe. But you've got to admit, you and Dean both ride the same comedic wavelength when you're feeling up to it."

Sophie shrugged. "I guess. Maybe we do." She sighed, and then a thought crossed her mind and her eyes brightened. "Hey, Sam, did I tell you about how I crushed any chance of Dean ever being able to hook up with Michelle, the school secretary?"

At that moment, Dean came back into the room. "No," Dean snapped. "No story telling. Now get up, we're getting a bit of training in."

"But I want to hear this," Sam complained, grinning.

"Yeah, Dean, Sam wants to hear," Sophie echoed.

"Not happening," Dean barked. "C'mon, I want to make sure you're good to shoot to kill before we leave you alone."

"Fine, fine," Sophie relented, standing up. "Another time," she whispered to Sam, and Dean made an exasperated sound as he exited the room, Sam and Sophie's laughter following him.

* * *

The next morning when Sophie walked out of her room, shuffling slowly and suffering from a serious case of bed head, she was surprised to see Sam and Dean rushing to and fro, disappearing behind doors and reemerging with weapons and books.

"Um, good morning," she said. There was no response, just more shuffling. She shrugged, walked into the kitchen, and started a pot of coffee.

Once it was done, the shuffling had died down, and Sophie poured herself a cup and made her way to the big room. Dean was zipping up a stuffed duffle bag and Sam was trying to fit a couple more books into a backpack. "Good morning," she tried again.

"Morning," both Sam and Dean said at the same time, clearly distracted.

"I thought this was supposed to be a quick salt and burn trip," Sophie said, confused.

At that, Dean raised his head and looked at her. "It is," he said.

"You just never know what anything could turn into," Sam elaborated. "We've left for easy hunts before and then all hell breaks loose and suddenly we're gone for two months as opposed to two days."

"Right," Sophie said, a tiny knot of worry beginning to form in her stomach. "So, theoretically, let's say this ghost catches a lucky break and you two bite the dust. Where does that leave me?"

Dean looked mildly offended. "Oh ye of little faith."

Sam gave his brother a look. "She's got a point."

Dean nodded. "Yeah, and I've got a contingency plan. Cas is going to check in on you when we're gone, maybe once every couple of days. We've also got a phone, and so do you, so we'll check in once a day. If we miss a day, don't freak out. If we miss two days, shoot a quick one up to Cas, and he'll figure out what's going on. If Sam and I really have bought the farm… Cas'll take care of you."

Sophie nodded silently, biting her lip.

Dean let out a pent up breath, unable to keep looking at her concerned, conflicted expression. "Look, Soph, we're going to be fine. We've been doing this a long time."

Sophie wanted to say something about how they killed vampires and werewolves and demons, and that she wasn't stupid; she knew there was always a chance that they wouldn't come back from a hunt. Instead, she masked her hesitation with a sip of coffee, and then said, "Okay. Well…good luck with your monster, then."

At that, Dean and Sam both grinned with a similar affection. She wanted to bite her tongue. _Good luck with your monster_? There had to have been a better farewell than that.

"Thanks, kid," Dean said, and he seemed to really mean it. He shouldered his duffle bag, and Sam slung the backpack over his shoulder. "Now, there's a chance Cas will appear out of nowhere again, but you really don't need to freak out; he's the only supernatural being who can pop in and out of here at will. There's food in the fridge, money by the sink, weapons…everywhere. And…that's it."

Sophie nodded. "Okay."

There was a heavy moment of silence. Dean clearly felt compelled to say more. "We'll be back, okay? We'll make it back."

Sophie kept nodding. "Okay." But this time, her "okay" seemed more relaxed, more natural.

With that, Dean nodded. "Okay," he said, mostly to himself. With that, he made his way towards the garage, where the Impala was parked.

Sam walked up to Sophie before he took off. "You need me for anything, even if it's homework help, just call. A lot of hunting is sitting around and waiting for something to happen, and I could always use the time I'm not doing anything to mess around with a calc problem."

Sophie grinned up at Sam. "Thanks."

He nodded, gave her shoulder a quick squeeze, and then followed Dean's lead and made his way to the garage.

Sophie stood quietly and listened as the Impala roared to life, and then as it drove away, the whole room faded into silence.

She stood there, coffee cup in hand, and stared the truth in the face. She was alone.

**Thank ya for reading! Some entertaining stuff next chapter, in my opinion at least. Until next time! ~ Lacey :)**


	26. Chapter 26: Culturing Cas

**Quick A/N: To the guest reviewer requesting more fluff between Dean and Sophie—all in good time, my friend. But realistically, they wouldn't quite be having deep, soul-wrenching heart to hearts yet; they're still getting to know each other. Still, you're asking for fluff, and if you stick around, I shall deliver!**

**In the meantime — here, enjoy some Castiel.**

_Chapter 26: Culturing Cas_

That night Sophie was pilfering through stacks of books, the stereo she'd found in a back room playing a Taylor Swift CD she'd swiped for two bucks at one of the thrift stores she and Dean had visited. The bunker was filled with books, and not just in the main room. They everywhere, some so dusty and flimsy she doubted they'd been opened in over half a century.

She was hoping to find a sort of codex, something that could give her the lowdown on every creepy-crawly that ever existed, a Monster Hunting for Dummies type of book. To her left sat an open two liter bottle of Dr. Pepper, and to her right sat a paper plate with two and a half slices of pizza that she had taken out of a box in the freezer and tossed into the oven.

"_If you could see that I'm the one who understands you, been here all along, so why can't you see, you belong with me, you belong with me_," Sophie sang under her breath before grabbing the two liter and taking a gulp from it. She glanced at the book in her hand, titled _Properties and Uses of Deadman's Blood_, before opening it and flipping through it. After a while she decided it was actually kind of interesting, so she sat back, leaning on a bookshelf with the book in one hand and a slice of pizza in the other, reading about deadman's blood as her head bobbed to Taylor Swift.

"Hello, Sophie."

Sophie dropped her pizza onto the book, leaving a saucy, greasy imprint on the page. She looked up, mouth open in shock as she stared at the source of the voice. She wasn't surprised to see Castiel standing not five feet from her, wearing his usual trenchcoat, his hands in his pockets. "Cas," she finally breathed, the adrenaline that had spiked through her veins slowly fizzling out, "we really need to work out a system for this."

"A system?" the angel asked, head tilted, blue eyes narrowed in confusion.

"Yeah, like, a schedule," Sophie said, putting her book on the ground and standing up. "Or, I don't know, some kind of warning."

"I could send you a message through your mind," Cas offered, "although I believe it would scare you all the same."

"You can do that?" Sophie asked, shocked. "Talk to me with your mind?"

Cas looked at her, concentration in his gaze. _Yes, quite easily_.

Sophie gasped as the voice resonated in her head, and she couldn't help the grin from splitting her face open. "Okay, angels are the coolest."

Cas looked mildly thoughtful. "Actually, we tend to run at exceedingly high temperatures."

She laughed, a response that seemed to surprise Cas. "You're funny, Cas, I'll give you that."

"I don't understand how that was comical."

"Of course you don't," Sophie sighed. She looked down at the pizza-stained book, bending down and pulling the pizza off, putting it back on the paper plate. Then, after a moment's hesitation, she ripped the ruined page out of the book and crumpled it up. "Couldn't have been that important," she mused to herself, closing the book and tossing it back into the original pile of books.

Cas watched her, admittedly curious about the child of the Winchester he was so close to. "Are you researching something?"

Sophie shrugged. "I don't know. Kind of, but not really. I'm just trying to learn as much as I can about…everything."

Cas nodded. "I see. I take it you're still getting used to the world that actually exists as opposed to the world you always knew about."

She looked up at him. "Yeah, I guess. I mean…I didn't really get eased into all of this. One moment I'm just some girl with this over-romanticized idea of tracking down her long lost father, and then the next moment this…_thing _has me and it's drinking my blood and then…," Sophie gestured to the bunker around her, "all of this. It's a lot. And…it's not like I'm still in a state of shock, I just feel like I need to constantly catch up. I need to know as much as I possibly can."

Cas nodded again, and Sophie got the feeling that a lot was going on behind those blue eyes of his. "Well, if it makes you feel any better, you've taken everything in remarkably well. Many people would have let it drive them crazy."

Sophie grinned. "Honestly, it'd probably drive me crazy if Dean or Sam weren't around. I mean, don't get me wrong, they have their flaws—a lot of them. But… I don't know, they make me feel safe. Like maybe I don't have to always be so worried about the world."

Cas grinned at her, and she thought that he had a very sweet, harmless grin, the kind a puppy might give if it could smile. "That is because if there's anywhere on this planet where you are safest, it is with the Winchesters." He reconsidered. "Or with me. I can be a force to be reckoned with, should the need arise."

Sophie grinned. "I bet."

He paused. "Would you mind if I stayed around a while? Heaven is…slow, recently. Which, I suppose, is good, but after the past few eventful years I've had, I've found it's left me…."

"Bored?" Sophie offered with a grin.

Cas considered. "Yes, I suppose bored is the right term." He continued to look thoughtful. "Bored. I don't know if I've ever been bored before."

"Well, trust me, I've been bored many times in my life. I'm an expert at curing it."

"I didn't realize boredom was a malady," Cas said. "How exactly do you cure it?"

"Well," Sophie said, leaning back down and screwing on the top to the bottle of soda, "I like to read, and listen to music, and watch movies."

"I was wondering about this music," Cas mentioned, watching Sophie as she carried the plate of pizza and the soda to the table and set it down. "This isn't Dean's, is it?"

"Nope," she said. "Dean hates my music. With, like, a fiery passion."

"I don't understand why," Cas offered, paying close attention to the song, which had changed. _…Oh, and it rains in your bedroom, everything is wrong, it rains when you're here and it rains when you're gone…_. "The words seem to be relatively poignant for a human creating them."

"Yeah, well, don't tell that to Dean, or your friendship might be over."

"So that's it," Cas said. "Music and movies and books? That's how you cure boredom?"

Sophie grinned. "Yeah, for the most part. Sometimes I like to keep it interesting and throw some television in there."

"I've never seen a movie."

Sophie turned to look at him, mouth dropping open. "You're joking."

"I didn't think there was anything particular funny about what I said," Cas said.

"No, it's just…never?"

Cas shook his head. "As I said, this boredom concept is fairly new to me."

"Well, Castiel, Angel of the Lord," Sophie said, grinning at him, "you have come to the right place. Here, your cinematic education begins." She walked over to one of the many bookshelves, which was filled with VHS tapes and DVDs. She pondered quickly over which movie should be Cas' first, and then finally she decided. "_The Godfather_. It's the epitome of everything film should ever be. And you're lucky this gets to be your first exposure. Pretty sure my first movie was, like, Blues Clues World Tour or something like that, so you're in a very enviable position right now."

Cas looked slightly overwhelmed. "If you say so."

"Popcorn," Sophie suddenly said, her eyebrows knitting together. "We need popcorn." She took a step towards the kitchen, and then froze and turned around. "Do angels eat?"

"It's not a requirement," Cas admitted.

"I see," Sophie said, surprised at how unsurprised she was.

"But," he continued at her expression, "if popcorn is part of the experience of watching a movie, then we'll eat popcorn."

She beamed. "Okay. Just give me a minute. Or two. I'm not exactly sure how long it takes for popcorn to pop, but give me that long."

It took her a while to find popcorn, and once she did she stuck it in the microwave and set the timer to the popcorn setting before walking back out into the room where Cas was waiting. He had the movie in his hand, reading the description on the back. "This movie is about mobsters?"

"Uh huh," Sophie said. "It's amazing. And in the least creepy way possible, I have a huge crush on Marlon Brando."

Cas looked taken aback. "This old man pictured on the back?"

Sophie nodded. "I mean, he's dead now. But you should see him in some of the films from when he was younger. He was ridiculously attractive back in his heyday. Ooh! We're watching _A Streetcar Named Desire_ sometime, then you'll see what I'm talking about."

Cas looked a little overwhelmed. "Who would name a streetcar Desire?"

"You have much to learn, young Padawan," Sophie sighed, unable to keep the grin off of her face.

"What did you just call me?"

Sophie sighed. "The list of movies you and I need to cover is going to be very, very long, Cas. Now come on, there's a TV in the war room we can use for now."

Looking completely bemused by what he'd just gotten himself into, Cas followed her into the war room that the bunker housed. There was a rather large TV on the far wall, with a VCR and DVD player hooked up to it as well as a variety of other contraptions that Sophie couldn't identify. She stuck the video into the VCR and adjusted the TV accordingly. Once it was running, she quickly went back to the kitchen, got the popcorn out of the microwave and into a large bowl, and returned with the food in one hand and the bottle of soda in the other. Cas was sitting in one of the large office chairs situated in the room, looking more out of his element than Sophie had ever seen him. She walked over to him, plopped down in the chair next to him, and placed the items in her hands on the table.

"Are you ready to have your mind blown, Castiel?" He opened his mouth, and she quickly added, "Not literally, Cas, it's an expression."

"Oh," he said, nodding. "Then yes. I am ready."

Sophie grinned, grabbed the remote control, and pressed play.

* * *

Dean called Sunday morning at around eleven A.M. Sophie was on the laptop Sam had left for her in case she needed to go online for school, looking to do some online shopping and fill a few of the holes in her wardrobe. She was in the middle of scouring through a mega sale when the phone Sam had given her the morning of her second day of school began to go off.

She picked it up, looking at the name programmed into the phone. _Dean_. She stared at it for a moment, wondering why seeing his name like that sent a little pang of discomfort through her chest. She couldn't quite put her finger on it. Deciding to just ignore the feeling, she picked up the phone and answered the call. "Hey."

"Hey," Dean's gruff voice came through the phone. "Just calling to say we're alive."

"Good to know," she said. "How's your monster?"

"Still kickin'," Dean said. "Sam and I are at the motel now, doing a bit of research. We're gonna hit up the house tonight, see if we can start narrowing down a possible location of our ghost's remains."

"I don't know a better way to spend a Sunday night," Sophie replied sarcastically.

"Yeah, well, with any luck we'll be outta here and back in Kansas by Tuesday," Dean said. He paused for a moment, and Sophie heard shuffling. "Everything good in your neck of the woods?"

"Yep," she replied, looking back to the laptop and scrolling through a vast selection of bras on clearance.

"Did Cas come by?"

"Yep," she said again, adding a black bra to her cart. "We watched _The_ _Godfather_."

There was a pause, this time without any shuffling in the background. "You what?"

"Watched _The Godfather_. With Cas. He really liked it. He had a little trouble with some of the context issues and cultural references, but I filled him in."

"You had a movie night with Cas?" Dean asked incredulously.

"Yeah," Sophie replied. "He stopped by, and I wasn't really doing anything, and he mentioned something about how weird it is to be bored as an angel and so I figured, why not."

"I didn't know Cas even watched movies," Dean remarked.

"He doesn't. He'd never seen one before. I'm culturing him."

She was surprised to hear a genuine laugh from Dean. "You're culturing Cas."

"Yep," she said. "If you had told me six months ago that I'd ever be introducing an angel to the world of cinematic delight, I'd have told you to go commit yourself."

"Funny what can happen in six months," Dean said. Sophie could hear a door open and close on Dean's end of the line. "Listen, Soph, I've gotta run. I'll check in tomorrow, okay?"

"Alright," she said. "Be careful."

"Always am," he said, and then he hung up.

She stared at the phone, still trying to dislodge that feeling of quiet discontent she'd gotten when seeing his name on her phone. What the hell was getting into her? Was she so messed up now that a phone call was sending her into a tailspin?

And then she knew. And the moment she knew why she was feeling that way she felt ashamed, because she knew she had no right to feel that way. She barely knew Dean yet; she was only scratching the surface of the man that was her father.

So why did, at her core, she wish that the phone had read _Dad _instead of _Dean_?

She shook her head, trying to physically banish the thought from her mind. She was being ridiculous, a hopeless, melodramatic, stereotypical teenage girl with a slight abandonment complex. She needed to just accept the limited role Dean would play in her life, be appreciative of it, and move on.

Now in a bad mood, she added two more bras and a few other items to her shopping cart before using a Visa gift card to pay for all of her items and have them shipped to an abandoned house she'd found about a mile away, since the bunker didn't exactly have an address.

Once she placed her order, her phone rang again. This time, it was an unknown number. Sophie looked at it, her heart picking up half a beat. Who else would be calling her on that phone except for Sam or Dean?

Hesitantly, she picked it up, and despite the fact that she could hear Dean in her ear telling her not to, she answered it. "Hello?"

"Hey S!"

Sophie grinned, feeling relief run through her. "Jack. Hey."

"You sound surprised."

"I'd forgotten that I gave you my number," Sophie replied truthfully.

"I feel like I should be offended."

"I'm sorry."

"All is forgiven, fair Sophia," Jack announced, eliciting a grin from Sophie. "Anyway, are you busy today?"

"Not in the slightest," Sophie replied.

"Excellent! Well, I was thinking you could use a bit of a tour around the area. Lebanon isn't really big, and you should get to know the towns around it, because that's where what little fun exists in Kansas is."

Sophie grinned. "Um…yeah. Sure. That sounds fun."

"Great. I can pick you up in half an hour."

"No," Sophie said, suddenly feeling panicked. "Um, I mean, I'm not at my house right now, maybe I can just meet you somewhere?"

If Jack picked up on the evasiveness in her voice, he didn't comment on it. "Do you want to just meet at my house? I could give you the address."

"Sure," Sophie said. Jack gave her his address, which she quickly typed into Google in an attempt to find directions. "Okay, thanks. I can be there in about forty-five minutes."

"See you then."

Sophie hung up and stared at the phone, and then she looked down at herself and groaned. She was still wearing her pajamas. She got up and walked back into her room, stripping down to her underwear and pulling on a pair of jeans, a loose long-sleeved gray sweater, her Keds, and a jacket. Her hair was down, and she brushed it a little before braiding it down the side of her head. A few short minutes later, she had the printed directions to Jack's house in one hand, her keys in the other, and she was ready to go.

**Thanks for reading, folks! All of your feedback has been wonderful so far, and I always appreciate it! More to come soon! ~ Lacey :)**


	27. Chapter 27: Shakespeares or Fitzgeralds

_Chapter 27: Shakespeares or Fitzgeralds_

When Sophie arrived in the neighborhood to which her directions led, her first thought was that there must've been some mistake.

Every house in the gated community was enormous, most made of dark brick or some sort of fancy looking stone. Each lawn was meticulously manicured, sporting perfectly green grass and flowers that wouldn't have indicated that it was almost winter. Some of the houses—mansions, more like—had elaborate fountains in the front with semi-pornographic sculptures. Sophie felt a little uncomfortable driving her beat up jalopy of a car around such a pristine neighborhood, and when she finally pulled up to the correct address and pulled hesitantly into the driveway of a particularly large house, she wished she could have at least been behind the wheel of the Impala.

She parked the car, glanced at the numbers on the door and the numbers on the paper in her hand, and then sighed. This was the right place, sure enough. She got out of the car, grabbed her phone and keys, shut the door, and then slowly made her way to the front door.

At the door, she was suddenly struck with a stressful decision. Did she knock, or did she ring the doorbell? A knock felt more comfortable to her, and it seemed a little more polite because it created a minimal disturbance. But the house was so large she doubted anyone would hear her knock, and so in that case, perhaps the doorbell was the best option. But she really didn't want to—

Suddenly, the door opened to reveal Jack. He was wearing a black jacket over a hunter green shirt, blue jeans, and an easy smile, his ocean-like eyes bright. "Were you planning on standing there all day?"

Sophie's mouth hung slightly open. "I…."

His grin widened. "I'm just messing with you, S. Come on in."

He held the door open for her, and hesitantly, she walked inside.

The inside of the house was beautiful. There was no other way Sophie could have put it. Steve's house had been extremely extravagant, but it had always lacked warmth. The Williams' house, however, was the opposite. It felt modern and elegant, yet comfortable. There were family pictures on the walls and dark wood floors, crystal light fixtures hanging from the ceiling. Sophie had to make a conscious effort to not let her jaw drop. "Wow, Jack. Your home is—"

"It's over-the-top, I know," he said, almost looking embarrassed.

"No," Sophie said, shaking her head, "it's gorgeous. You can really tell someone takes pride in this place."

"It's my mom's baby," Jack admitted. "She obsesses over every little detail. It's kind of insane."

Sophie followed him deeper into the house, taking it all in. "Is she an interior designer?"

Jack laughed. "No, but you'd think so, wouldn't you. The house is just her hobby. She's a kindergarten teacher."

"A kindergarten teacher?" Sophie repeated, surprised.

"Yep," Jack said. "My dad's actually the principal of the school she works at. They've got this whole office-romance running joke that just gets sickening it's so damn adorable."

"A kindergarten teacher and a principal," Sophie said, suddenly realizing all of her words were just repeating Jack's. Still, this time, her echo held an unspoken question as she stared at the grandeur around her.

Jack seemed to catch on. "This house did not get paid for off of my parents' salaries, let me tell you. One of my sisters, Elodie, she's kind of a millionaire. She bought them this house for Christmas a few years ago."

Sophie just stared at Jack. "A millionaire?" She repeated weakly, feeling like a parrot or something of the sort.

"She writes books. Like, really sappy, borderline revolting romances. A lot of them have gotten turned into movies. You've probably heard of some of them. _Whiskey and Wanderlust_. _The Changing Tide._"

At this, Sophie's eyes lit up and her mouth dropped open into a full 'O' of astonishment. "Wait. Are you telling me your sister is E. R. Williams?"

Jack cringed. "You're a fan," he observed.

"I wouldn't call myself a fan," Sophie said, backtracking. "But my mom and I used to read most of her books, and I've liked a few of them. _A Drop in the Ocean_ was beautiful, and the ending to _Quiet Lake _was just—"

"They're awful," Jack interrupted. "They exploit and romanticize tragedies like death and cancer and violence and use them as plot devices to manufacture conflict and drama. She's a total sellout. I love my sister to death, but she's a sellout."

Sophie cracked a grin. "Don't be such a literature purist."

"Literature is my thing. And what she writes isn't literature, it's instant gratification for hopeless romantics."

Sophie laughed. "We can't all be Shakespeares or Fitzgeralds."

Jack grinned at her with that wide, open smile that made Sophie feel completely at ease. "It's nice to talk to someone who gets me," he said.

Sophie grinned back, and then suddenly she wished she had put more makeup on than just a swipe of mascara. Suddenly, she wanted Jack to think she was pretty.

But before she could worry any more about that, they'd entered a kitchen. "Alright," Jack said, walking up to one of three industrial sized fridges. "Before we head out, do you want something to drink?"

"I'm fine, thanks," Sophie replied.

"Nonsense, you'll have a Coke," Jack said, pulling out two glass bottles of soda.

"You're a pushy person, Jack," Sophie said as he offered her one of the bottles, which she took.

"It's part of my charm," he replied, twisting the cap off the Coke and taking a gulp. He grabbed a set of car keys off the bar and started walking out of the kitchen. She looked after him, feeling somewhat stunned.

As if sensing she wasn't directly behind him, he turned his head over his shoulder and offered her another one of his easy smiles. "You coming, S?"

* * *

Three hours later, they were sitting down at a little hole in the wall coffee shop called Busboys and Brew_, _waiting for their coffees.

Sophie was grinning, which she felt like she'd been doing perpetually since she stepped out the door of Jack's house with him. "I never knew Kansas could have so much to look at," she said.

Jack leaned back in his chair, tucking his hands behind his head. "We're America's hidden gem, I swear. Well, actually, Georgia is America's hidden gem, but we're a close second."

Sophie was about to reply when a leggy barista walked up to their table with their coffees. "Jack and Sophie?" she asked, looking at the names written on the cups.

"That would be us," Jack responded.

Sophie tried not to pay attention as the beautiful blonde smiled brilliantly at Jack as she set his coffee in front of him. To Sophie's surprised delight, however, he didn't seem to notice, offering the girl a quick thank you and then turning his eyes back to Sophie. The barista, looking properly snubbed, quickly set Sophie's coffee none too gently down onto the table and then briskly walked off.

Sophie grabbed her coffee, a dark roast with a pump of hazelnut syrup, observing Jack as she took a sip. She guessed he was attractive. His effortless smile, structured jaw, and midnight blue eyes were all magnetic. It wasn't surprising to Sophie that the barista had practically thrown herself at him. But the rest of him was more attractive. She liked that he was an awkward bookworm, that he was just as confident in his failures as he was in his gifts, that he had stopped to help a lonely new girl that got lost in the hallway.

"So," Jack said, cutting off her rambling thoughts and bringing her back to where they were. Sophie desperately hoped she wasn't blushing. "We've talked about a lot today; music, movies, my past occupation as my sisters' dress-up guinea pig, the best and worst works published by E. R. Williams, opinions on wearing camo on an everyday basis, the benefits of being bilingual. But you haven't said much about your dad and your uncle."

Sophie was a little taken aback. She figured eventually she'd be asked to open up about her personal life, but not this early on. And it wasn't that she was embarrassed or scared to mention her past to Jack. She just didn't know _how_. Her life with Sam and Dean and the life she was trying to lead at school…they were two separate lives, and they didn't converge for a reason.

But Sophie found herself replying. "My dad, he's…." Sophie trailed off, finding it hard to verbalize what she was thinking. "Well, he's sort of rough around the edges, but when it boils down to it he's the bravest, most dedicated person I've ever met. And my uncle, he's great. Really understanding and smart, and just as brave as my dad. We haven't exactly known each other all that long, so we're still getting used to the whole dynamic of living together, but it's actually kind of nice and…it could be a lot worse."

Jack was completely focused on her, his eyes as dark and deep as the ocean. "Why do I get the feeling you know exactly what _worse _is?"

Sophie looked at him, astonished at his bluntness. But perhaps what surprised her more was the fact that she realized she felt comfortable enough around him to reply. "I lived with my stepfather for a while after my mom died. He hated me. He'd go weeks without saying a word to me. I was really alone when I lived with him. I had…I had a best friend, too, but he…he's gone. So those last months living with Steve, my stepfather…well, it just sucked." Sophie said all of this fast, wanting to get it all off of her chest as quickly as she could while Jack was willing to listen. His expression was no different, just looking at her with interest and focus, like she was the only think he could see. "But, um, then my dad and I managed to find each other. I'd never known him, and he didn't actually know that I existed, but somehow it all came together and…here I am." She took a nervous sip of coffee, signifying the end of her monologue.

To her utter shock and relief, Jack offered her a small grin. "Here you are," he affirmed.

Sophie felt a lightness. It felt good to tell someone all of the major issues in her life while finding a way to leave out the whole monster hunting aspect. She glanced up at him, holding her cup of coffee like a security blanket. "So…that's it? I'm not too crazy for you?"

"On the contrary, you're probably not crazy enough," Jack mused. "I'm a tough guy to keep up with, if we're being honest."

Sophie grinned. "Sorry to disappoint."

"Never, S," Jack said, drinking from his cup. There was a pause when neither of them said anything, and Sophie was glad to find the silence was comfortable. Conversation didn't need to be forced between them, and she took that as a good sign that their friendship was authentic. After a moment, Jack sat his cup down and leaned forward. "And I'm sorry about your friend. The one you said is gone."

Sophie unconsciously bit her lip, feeling the pang in her chest that she always got when she thought about Patrick. The feelings were always the same: guilt, grief, and the feeling that this was something she'd have to live with her entire life. "Thanks."

He looked at her for a moment longer, and then glanced at his watch. "Damn it," he said.

"Time to go?" Sophie guessed.

"Kind of," Jack said, looking annoyed. "It's Sunday, so we have family dinner in an hour."

"Family dinner?" Sophie repeated, smiling. "That's so cute."

"Yeah, well, it's just me and Jamie left living at home, so it's not quite as grand an affair as it used to be. Harry usually comes over." Suddenly, his face brightened. "You should come, too!"

Sophie was startled. "I…um, I don't know, I wouldn't want to intrude."

Jack was already shaking his head. "You wouldn't be intruding, trust me. My parents love it when we bring people over. They're really nice, I swear." When she didn't immediately answer, he backtracked. "Unless you have other plans, I understand."

"No," she said, making a split second decision. "No other plans. I'd love to come."

* * *

The family dinner was amazing. Sophie had been a bit in awe the whole time, having never really experienced the dynamic of a typical family. Both of Jack's parents were so kind and funny, and they'd been overjoyed to set a place at the table for "the girl Jack keeps talking about."

Mr. Williams had cooked the meal, some Italian dish that had Sophie wishing her stomach was big enough to hold five servings, and Mrs. Williams had brought out a huge chocolate cake at the end. It felt like the most extravagant affair, and yet it was just a regular Sunday for them. Sophie was relieved that conversation flowed easily for her, too, and she had just as good of a time talking with Mr. and Mrs. Williams as she did with Jack, Jamie, and Harry.

Around seven at night, Sophie finally had a quick moment to herself. Jamie and Harry were being adorable as they washed the dishes together, Mr. Williams ("Mr. Williams is my father's name, Sophie, call me Mark") was having a nightcap as he read the paper in the parlor, and Mrs. Williams ("Oh sweetheart, call me Sarah") was having a heated conversation with Jack about how he was going to kill their dog Martha with all the scraps he'd fed her under the table at dinner. Sophie, grinning as they bickered, slid into the next room and pulled out the cell phone in her pocket. She turned it on and stared at the screen.

Four missed calls, all from Dean.

Immediately, the knot of worry that seemed to be ever present in her stomach began to grow into a barbed wire ball of panic. As quickly as possible, she dialed his number.

He picked up after the first ring, his voice filled with worry. "Sophie?"

"Dean?" she asked, trying to ignore her knot of panic. "What's going on? Has something happened? Is Sam okay? Are you okay?"

"What?" Dean asked. "No, everything's fine, we're both okay. I was calling to see if _you_ were okay."

Now Sophie was confused. "I'm totally fine. Why would you think I wasn't?"

Sophie could've sworn she heard a sign of relief of some sort, or at least the Dean Winchester equivalent. "Cas popped over a little while ago to check on you and you weren't there, so he told me."

"Oh," Sophie said, everything making much more sense now. "Yeah, I went out."

"You went out?"

"Yeah," she said, rolling her eyes, forgetting he couldn't see. "Sorry, is that not allowed?"

"No, no it's fine, I just…. Where the hell did you go? You're in the middle of nowhere."

"A friend from school invited me to hang out, and I was bored so I went. I didn't know I needed to ask your permission."

Dean took a while to answer. "You don't," he finally said, sounding tired. "I wasn't that freaked out when Cas told me. It didn't cross my mind that you might be in trouble until you didn't answer your phone."

"I'm sorry," Sophie said, and this time she meant it. "I wasn't paying attention. In the future, I'll make sure to answer it."

"Good," Dean said.

There was an awkward moment of silence, which Sophie felt the need to fill. "So…your ghost?"

"We found the remains," Dean said. "Sam and I are on our way to finish it off now. We should be back by the time you get back from school tomorrow."

"Good to hear," Sophie said. "And hey, is Cas still there?"

"No, I think he might be waiting at the bunker in case you come back."

Sophie groaned. "Does he have nothing else to do?"

"This is your fault, you showed him movies."

"How come he can't just magically find me like he can find you two?" Sophie asked.

"He cloaked you, remember?" Dean said. "That wasn't just from demons, it was from all supernatural beings."

"And you two aren't cloaked?" Sophie asked in surprise.

"We are," Dean replied. "Just not from Cas."

"Right," Sophie sighed. "Well, I'll probably be back home soon, anyway. I'm sorry I made you worry."

"Don't sweat it," Dean said, and she was happy to hear that he mostly just sounded relieved. "We'll have to give Cas your number and give you his number so that every time he drops by and you're out, you two can just work it out yourselves."

"Okay," Sophie said, preparing to end the call. Then she thought about what he'd said. "Wait. Cas can work a phone?"

To her surprise, Dean laughed. "Yeah, I know, it's a mystery to us all. Take care, kiddo."

"You, too."

He hung up, and when she tucked the phone back into her pocket and turned around, she jumped. Jack was standing there, watching her from the doorway. "I take it you've got to go?" he asked.

She gave an apologetic shrug. "I'm sorry."

Jack smiled. "I'm not. One more second with my family and you're going to wish you had picked Team Mason over Team Jack."

Sophie laughed. "Your family could all be convicted felons and I'd still choose Team Jack. I'd choose Team Voldemort over Team Mason."

Jack nodded. "It's true. We all know Voldemort's really just misunderstood and in need of a good long hug."

Sophie laughed again. "Well, either way, I had a great time today. Thanks for inviting me."

"Anytime, S," Jack said. "Want me to walk you out?"

"Sure," she said.

As they walked out, she found Mr. and Mrs. Williams and thanked them for the evening, internally pleased that they seemed to like her so much. She said goodbye to Jamie and Harry, who were curled up on the couch in the living room watching Jeopardy. As they opened up the front door, Martha trotted up to her, tongue out, and Sophie leaned down and gave her a farewell scratch between the ears before she stepped outside, Jack right behind her.

Sophie unlocked the car and then turned to look at Jack. "Thanks again for the invite," she said. "Your family is great. Or, at least, the four-thirteenths of your family that I've met are great."

He grinned. "You're just lucky Martha likes you. I don't trust people that Martha doesn't like."

Sophie smiled as she opened up the driver's side door. "I'll see you tomorrow, then?"

He shoved his hands in his pockets, looking down at her carefully. "See you tomorrow."

She slid into the driver's side, closed the door, and started the car. As Jack was lit up by her headlights, she gave him a little wave, and then backed out of the driveway and was on the road.

* * *

As Sophie walked back into the bunker and dropped her keys onto the kitchen table, she suddenly had the feeling she wasn't alone. Sighing, she walked out into the main room, and was unsurprised to see Castiel sitting at the table, hands folded.

"Cas," she sighed, trying to minimize the annoyance in her voice as she took off her jacket. "What are you doing here?"

Wordlessly, he took something out of his pocket and held it up for her to see. It was a VHS tape. _A Streetcar Named Desire_.

Unable to help herself, Sophie smiled.

**In the spirit of Valentine's Day, here's a chapter of Sophie being a girl hanging out with a boy. And then some other _Supernatural _stuff thrown in there. Hope you enjoyed, and much love to everyone who leaves reviews; your support is the only valentine this girl needs (unless you can offer me Jensen Ackles, in which case, I can reprioritize). Until next time! ~ Lacey :)**


	28. Chapter 28: Dig In, Winchesters

_Chapter 28: Dig In, Winchesters_

The next few weeks were surprisingly smooth.

The system they had kept saying they needed to fine tune had finally been fine tuned. Sophie went to school and did her thing, and Sam and Dean did theirs. Whenever Sam and Dean went off on a hunt, Sophie waited for Dean's phone call to make sure they were okay, and to her great relief, he always called.

Those calls had become something Sophie looked forward to whenever Dean and Sam were away. They'd talk about how Sophie was doing at school, about her friends, about her feud with Mason, about whatever she was doing with her free time at the bunker. And in return they would tell her about whatever hunt they were on, the details varying depending on the case. There was a witch messing around in Colorado, a werewolf in Texas, and even a rogue angel in Georgia.

The nights that Sam and Dean were away, Cas would come and keep Sophie company, and they'd watch a movie together. So far they'd gotten through a few of the basic classics like _Casablanca_ and _Gone with the Wind_ as well as all of the Star Wars movies. She had big plans for Cas in the movie department, and she was counting down the days until they could finally start the Harry Potter movies.

When Dean and Sam were back at the bunker, Sophie continued her training sessions, and she was starting to notice a change in her body. She'd always been on the smaller side, and she had never been particularly strong. But now she was starting to gain a little bit of muscle in her arms and legs and core. She was no body builder by any stretch of the imagination, but it still felt good to know that her efforts were paying off.

She had also started going on runs in the mornings, since she tended to get up a few hours before Sam and Dean. She'd purchased a pair of running shoes and a couple pairs of running shorts, convinced Sam to give her one of his old iPods, which was filled with music that floated somewhere in between her and Dean's musical tastes, and that was all she'd needed. When she had told Dean she was planning on running every morning, he'd made another comment about how he was convinced she was Sam's child. But he said it was fine, as long as she brought her phone with her.

After one such run, which she'd clocked at three miles, she walked back down in the bunker, tendrils of her hair sticking to her sweaty skin, her face flushed. She was bobbing her head to the music in her ears. "_You better lose yourself in the music, the moment, you own it, you better never let it go_," she mumbled under her breath as she made her way into the kitchen for a glass of water, where she ran into Dean, who was grabbing a cup of coffee.

"You look gross," he said as she walked in. "You should take a shower."

She stuck her tongue out at him and grabbed a glass from a cabinet, filling it up with filtered water from the fridge. She kept bobbing her head and singing random bits and pieces of the Eminem song she was listening to, and after a moment Dean looked over at her.

"Rap?" he asked in disbelief. "You like _rap_?"

She took one of the earphones out of her ear and looked a little sheepish. "Only when I run," she admitted. "Gets the blood pumping."

"Well, you're not running anymore," he said, yanking the other earphone out of her ear with a mischievous grin.

"You're obnoxious," she complained, but she paused her music and tossed the iPod onto the counter, along with her earphones.

"Have you eaten anything yet?" Dean asked as he poured coffee into his mug.

"I had a banana before I ran," Sophie said after taking a huge gulp of water. "And I'm about to get some coffee, too. But first I need a shower."

"Yeah, you smell like hard work and dedication, and that needs to be taken care of pronto," Dean said, grinning.

"You could try going on a run," Sophie offered. "It wouldn't kill you."

"Actually, I'm pretty sure it would," Dean said.

She shrugged, finishing off her water. "Whatever. I'll be out in a few."

Thirty minutes later, she walked out of her room clean and refreshed, her hair braided into pigtails. When she walked out into the bunker, she could smell something amazing coming from the kitchen. She wandered in and saw Dean at the oven, and her mouth dropped open in shock.

He heard her come in and turned. "Hungry?"

It took her a moment to form words. "This whole time that I've been living off of DiGiorno pizzas and Easy Mac, and...you can cook?"

"Like a pro, actually. I just have a much less sophisticated palate than most and don't usually use my culinary powers for good." He gestured towards the food he was making. "Lucky for you, today I was feeling like breakfast."

She glanced at all the food. "Pancakes, bacon, sausage, eggs…. Wow, Dean."

"And there's freshly squeezed orange juice in the fridge," he said proudly.

She stared at him. "Who are you and what have you done with Dean Winchester?"

At that moment, Sam walked in. "Actually, it's just him. He sometimes gets into these cooking moods. You just have to appreciate them when they come, because they don't happen often."

"Okay, then," she said, grinning.

"Dig in, Winchesters," Dean pronounced, and a few minutes later the three of them were sitting in the main room, the table heaped with food.

Sophie's plate was filled to the brim with food, far surpassing the amount on Sam's plate and equaling that on Dean's. As she began to eat, Sam looked over at her in shock. "Are we starving you or something?"

Sophie shook her head and swallowed a mouthful of pancake. "I just got back from a run, so I'm extra hungry," she explained, taking a long drink of orange juice.

Sam nodded. "Well, I think it's great you go on runs. At least somebody here attempts to take care of themselves," he said, giving Dean a pointed look.

"Hey, so how's that dickhead you're fighting with at school? Mason?" Dean cut in, stabbing some pancakes onto a fork, swirling them in a small ocean of maple syrup, and bringing them to his mouth.

"Still a dickhead," Sophie said. "In Brit lit he rigged the raffle so that we'd be partners in this project just so he could make me do all the work for it. Which is fine, I guess, because I'd rather make sure his idiot self doesn't screw up the project. But now I have to make a presentation about the underlying homoerotic subtext in _The Picture of Dorian Gray _all by myself."

Dean almost spat out his pancakes. "Homoerotic _what_? What are they teaching you at this school?"

"It's a big part of the book," Sophie said, shrugging.

"Unbelievable," Dean responded, shaking his head.

Sam turned to look at Sophie. "So Mason hasn't been overly…aggressive towards you?" Sam asked, and Sophie felt her heart grow a little warm at how concerned he sounded.

"Mason's an asshole, but he's all talk," she said. "We shoot each other evil glares, say bitchy things to each others' faces, play like hell against the other during gym. But that's all it is."

"You almost sound like you like it," Dean noted.

Sophie thought about it. "Maybe I kind of do," she admitted. "I like being in a fight that I can actually fight in. That I can win."

Dean nodded. As much as her feud with Mason screamed _destructive behavior_, he got it. "Well, like we said before. The moment it's too much, you call, and we'll chop off his—"

"We'll take care of it," Sam cut in.

"Guys, please, the testosterone is suffocating me," she joked, cutting another piece of pancake. "I told you, I got this. Besides, it's not like Jack or Harry or Jamie would let him do anything either. You guys haven't met Harry, but he's ginormous, so really, I'm not in any danger."

"You know, we haven't met any of your friends," Sam said. "You talk about them a lot, and you go over to their house on Sunday nights, but that's all we've got on them."

"Well, it's not like I could invite them here," Sophie said a little defensively. "Literally the first book you see when you walk in is called _Demons: Evil or Misunderstood? _They'd think I was crazy."

"True," Sam said.

"It's fine, really. One day I'm sure you'll meet them."

Things were quiet for a moment as they all focused on eating more of Dean's delicious breakfast. Sophie couldn't help but notice Dean looked like he really wanted to say something. And sure enough, a minute or so later, he did. "So this Harry kid is dating the girl Jamie," Dean said.

"Yep."

"And Jamie's twin brother is Jack?"

"Someone's been paying attention," Sophie said with mock pride.

"And this Jack kid…," Dean said gruffly. "He's just a friend."

Sophie thought about Jack and his natural smile and ocean eyes. "Yep."

Dean groaned. "For the love of God."

"What?" she asked, offended.

"You hesitated. He's not just a friend."

"I did not hesitate," Sophie shot back, roughly biting the end off of a strip of bacon and chewing it in annoyance.

"You kind of did," Sam pointed out.

"Oh my God, Sam, not helping!" Sophie exclaimed.

"How old is he? Is he going to college? Does he own a motorcycle? Does he have a history of drug or alcohol abuse? Has he ever been arrested? Does he have a criminal record? What's his social security number?" Dean asked, eyes narrowed.

"Dean," Sam reprimanded.

"Kidding, kidding," Dean grumbled under his breath. "About the social security number."

"You can't control who I'm friends with, or who I date for that matter, if we even were dating," Sophie snapped. "If I want to ride off into the sunset on the back of motorcycle with a twenty-two year old alcoholic high school dropout with a criminal record a mile long, there's nothing you can do to stop me."

"Hell yeah there is," Dean shot back. "Ever heard of a .45?"

"Oh my God, Dean," Sophie groaned. "Jack's completely harmless, okay? He's sixteen. The most dangerous thing he owns is the complete works of Sigmund Freud. He drives a Honda Civic. The worst thing he's ever done is return a library book a month late. He tried smoking a cigar at one of their family dinners the other night and almost choked."

Dean stared at her for a moment, and then he smirked. "So you're dating a pansy?"

Sophie threw her hands up in the air. "For the last time. We. Are. Not. Dating."

As they continued to bicker, Sam just looked at them both. Feeling like for the first time in a long time, he and his brother were in a very good place, he grinned, content to listen to them as he finished eating his breakfast.

* * *

A few days later, Sophie was at Jack's house, laying down on the floor of his bedroom as his dog Martha rested her head on Sophie's stomach. Sam and Dean were on their way to Oklahoma for a case, and Sophie had gone over to Jack's house after school to kill time until her movie date with Cas later that night.

Jack was sitting at his desk working out some algebra equations, and whenever he had a problem he called to Sophie and she helped him. "Hey," he said. "What's the quadratic formula again?"

"You really need to get that memorized ASAP, Jack," Sophie sighed.

"Why would I do that when I can just ask you?" he replied.

She rolled her eyes, scratching a very content Martha's head. "The opposite of _b _plus or minus the square root of _b _squared minus four times _a _times _c_, all over two times _a_."

There was the scratching of a pencil, and then Jack said, "Okay, I'm going to need you to repeat that one more time."

Sophie groaned loudly in annoyance for him to hear, but she couldn't help but grin as she relayed the formula again.

A few seconds later, Jack swiveled around in his chair to look at Sophie. "You know, if you want to leave, I wouldn't hold it against you. This isn't exactly a fun afternoon or anything."

Sophie narrowed her eyes. "And force Martha to deal with you on her own? Never."

Jack laughed. "Well, at least find something to keep yourself entertained. You could always look through my bookshelves, see if there's something that catches your eye."

Sophie's interest was piqued. "You sure you wouldn't mind?"

Jack waved away her words. "You know how the saying goes. _Mi libro es tu libro_, or something like that."

Sophie laughed and stood up, Martha trotting away from her dejectedly. She made her way towards Jack's bookshelves, which were gigantic and stuffed to the brim with novel after novel after novel. "Jeez," Sophie said. "You've really acquired quite the collection."

"You should've seen it before I did the big Goodwill clear-out last year," he said, turning to return to his homework.

She quietly perused the shelves, marveling at what he'd managed to stock up over the years. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dickens, Steinbeck, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Beckett, Shakespeare, Socrates, Aquinas. And that didn't come even close to covering it. And then he had more contemporary novels like _Harry Potter,_ the _Hunger Games,_ the _Chronicles of Narnia,_ the _Lord_ _of the Rings_, and—

Suddenly, a book caught her eye that she'd never heard of before. She pulled it off of the shelf, eyeing it with interest. It was dark, with a slightly sexual looking cover of two muscled, shirtless men wielding weapons. Judging by all of similarly shaped and colored books following it, this was the first book in a particularly long series. Sophie glanced at the title.

_Supernatural_, by Carver Edlund.

Despite the terrible cover, the fact that she'd never heard of it sparked her interest, not to mention the fact that she was inherently invested in all things supernatural nowadays. Plus, she trusted Jack's literary tastes. She turned the book in her hand and read the synopsis on the back.

_Along a lonely California highway, a mysterious Woman in White lures men to their deaths…a terrifying phenomenon that may be Sam and Dean's first clue to their father's whereabouts._

Sophie froze. Sam and Dean. And a book about the supernatural.

But…no. A coincidence. It had to be a coincidence. There was no way Sam and Dean had agreed to let their lives be published like this.

She flipped the book open and read the first page, and it soon became hauntingly clear it was not a coincidence. This book was about her father and her uncle, there was no doubt about it.

She turned to Jack, who was still huddled over his homework. "Jack," she said, keeping her voice even, "what is this?"

He turned around and saw the book in her hand. "Ah. The _Supernatural _books. Severely underrated stuff right there. A few things are a bit outside the realm of believability, but what else do you expect for a series about monster hunting brothers?"

"Can I borrow them?" Sophie immediately asked.

"Sure," Jack said. "Hey, didn't you say your dad's name was Dean and your uncle's name was Sam? Those are the names of the brothers in the books. What a coincidence."

"Yeah," Sophie said, still a bit shocked as she grabbed all of the books she could fit into her hands. "What a coincidence."

**Always fun where the Supernatural books are involved. Some really fun stuff is ahead, guys. Thank you for reading, and for all of you who write reviews, favorite, follow, or just like to check in on this story whenever you come across it. Your support definitely helps keep me inspired to write. You people are wonderful. Until next time. ~Lacey :)**


	29. Chapter 29: Consider That Your Warning

_Chapter 29: Consider That Your Warning_

Sam and Dean's case in Oklahoma took them a week and a half, longer than they'd anticipated. There had been a slew of vampire attacks, and the nest had been much harder to locate and infiltrate than either brother had imagined.

Dean had managed to call Sophie every night, but she had sounded distracted each time they talked. By the fifth night he was starting to get a little concerned. Was something going on at school? Was it Mason? It had to be Mason, she didn't have any other problems in her life.

Dean was starting to feel terrible, going off on a hunt while some asshole kid was making his daughter's life hell.

He decided that once they were done with the hunt, he would go back, make Sophie tell him just what it was that Mason had done, and then kick the kid's ass into the twenty-second century.

When, in fact, they had finally taken out the nest of vamps, not without sustaining a few bumps and bruises, Dean voiced his concern on the drive home. They'd been driving for a few hours when Dean suddenly turned down the volume mid-Metallica song. "What do you think Mason did?" he asked Sam gruffly.

"We don't know that he did anything, Dean," Sam said for what he felt was the thousandth time as he adjusted the sling that supported his arm. A vampire had tossed him across a room and he'd landed on his wrist, fracturing it.

Dean rolled his eyes. "C'mon, Sam, you talked to her, too. Something's up with her."

"Yeah, and she's a teenage girl. It could be anything. It could be a bad grade or a tough class or that boy she likes or friend trouble or a hundred other things. It doesn't mean it's Mason."

"Sam, c'mon, you can't tell me you're not worried about it," Dean said.

"Of course I am," Sam said, still playing with the frustrating strap on his sling. "But she told us that Mason isn't a big deal, and so far there hasn't been a reason to believe otherwise."

"You're right, I guess," Dean admitted, annoyed that Sam was right. He didn't say anything for a moment. "But if Mason actually did do something, we're ripping him a new one."

"Of course," Sam replied.

Satisfied, Dean turned the music back up, and they continued onward for several more hours until finally, they made it back to the bunker.

When they did, the parked the car outside and made their way inside. Dean was thinking about all the ways he was going to kill Mason as they descended the stairs, and Sam was still adjusting the strap of his sling, as he never seemed to be able to get it into a position that was comfortable.

"Hey, Soph!" Dean called out as they reached the bottom of the stairs. "We're back."

There was a tiny shuffle down one of the halls that branched off from the main room, and then Sophie appeared. Dean was a little shocked at her appearance. Despite the fact that it was late afternoon on a Thursday, she was wearing pajamas. Her hair was down, framing her face with unruly red-gold waves, looking like it hadn't been brushed in days. There were bags under her eyes, like she hadn't been sleeping.

"You look rough," Dean said right off the bat, dumping his duffle bag onto the table.

"It's been a weird week," Sophie said as she rubbed her eyes, her voice a little cracked, like she'd just gotten up from a coma. "How was the hunt?"

"Successful. Long, but successful," Dean said.

Sophie looked behind his shoulder and saw Sam. "Oh my God, Sam! What happened?"

"It's nothing," Sam said, waving away Sophie's concern. "A little fracture. Nothing a few days off won't fix."

Sophie nodded, still looking concerned, but more in an adorable way than anything else. "Well, if you're sure you're okay, I've got a lot of work to do, so I'll see you two around."

"Woah, woah, hold up," Dean said as she turned to go. "Come back for a sec."

She turned, wary. "What?"

"Is everything…alright with you?" he asked, wanting to tread carefully so as to not scare her away from talking to him.

"Of course," she replied too quickly. "Why?"

"You've sounded distracted on the phone," Sam interjected, backing Dean up. "And you look, well, like Dean said, rough."

She rolled her eyes. "A girl doesn't do her hair and makeup and suddenly she looks rough. You guys sure know how to boost my confidence."

"C'mon, Soph, you know I'm right," Dean continued, eyes narrowed in thought as he looked at her. "What's going on?"

"It's nothing," she said, eyes down. Dean knew that she knew she'd been caught in a lie.

After a few moments of nobody saying anything, Dean shook his head. "I'm going to kill him," he proclaimed.

At that, Sophie looked up in surprise. "Wait, what? Who?"

"Cut the crap, Sophie, you know who," Dean said, eyes narrowed. "Mason. Clearly this fight between you two has escalated beyond your control and he's done something."

Sophie rolled her eyes. "God, Dean, how many times do I have to tell you, I've got Mason covered! He hasn't done anything out of the ordinary."

Dean eyed her skeptically. "If it's not Mason, then what's up with you?"

"I…," Sophie started, looking like she wished she could be anywhere else. "Well…."

"Kid, c'mon, spit it out," Dean said impatiently.

Sophie looked like for a moment, she would pass out from holding in whatever she wanted to say. And then she blurted out, "Ruby, Sam? You slept with _Ruby_? Even I could've told you that was a crappy decision from a mile away!"

Dean and Sam froze, mouths open in shock. Clearly, they hadn't seen that one coming. When she saw that neither of them was going to speak, she continued.

"And, holy crap, Dean. Why couldn't you see that you and Jo were _made _for each other. Like seriously, if your bastard daughter can see that then I'm pretty sure you can. And Sam, you used to be so messed up with your whole demon blood addiction, why the hell did you think that'd be a good road to go down? And you're afraid of clowns? Really? And…and…Dean, oh my God, you went to Hell, like, actual _Hell_, and—"

Dean held up a hand, the kind that signaled an immediate end to her rambling. Sophie shut her mouth mid-thought, biting on her lip in nervousness.

Both Dean and Sam were deathly quiet, just staring at her in shock, and she looked back at them. Dean could tell she was studying them, looking at them with new eyes. And then he knew, and he turned back to Sam.

"She found the books," he said. "I was so afraid she'd find the books."

Sam's eyes widened with understanding. "Crap."

Dean turned back to Sophie. "This is why you've been acting so weird on the phone? You've been reading those _Supernatural _books?"

"Jack had them on his shelf," she explained defensively. "And I saw the cover and thought it looked interesting and then I read the back cover and I could tell something was up. So I read the first couple of pages, and when I realized they were about you, I borrowed them all and I've been reading nonstop for almost two weeks. I'm at the part now where you and Ruby are having sex while Dean's in Hell, Sam, and let me tell you, Carver Edlund is incredibly explicit and I keep having to skip huge chunks of some chapters because he's so descriptive and I'm really not comfortable reading—"

"Okay, just stop," Dean cut in, closing his eyes and shaking his head. "I'll get sick if you start talking about Sam's terrible sex life."

Sam looked offended. "Look, sleeping with Ruby was not the best idea, yeah, but that doesn't mean my sex life was terrible. In fact, the sex was awesome."

"Oh my God," Sophie said, covering her ears. "There are things you say in front of your niece, Sam, and then there are things you _don't _say in front of your niece, and that was one of those things."

Sam just shrugged, shoving his hands into his pockets.

Dean turned to Sophie. "Look, everything in those books, it's all…."

"Completely true," she cut in. "I asked Cas, and he told me. Apparently these are going to be the freaking Winchester Gospels one day."

"Damn it, Cas," Dean grumbled, shifting his eyes to Sam, who looked equally peeved.

"It's like reading your biography," Sophie continued, her eyes excited. "You two are...incredible."

As frustrating as it was, Dean could understand why she was obsessing over the books. They were her ticket into the lives of her family, a way to understand him and Sam in a way she couldn't before.

In a way, Dean was jealous that she had the books. He would never be able to understand her like a father should; he would never get those first fifteen years back, would never get a book detailing the adventures of infant Sophie, or toddler Sophie, or preteen Sophie. He was surprised at himself as he thought it, but he'd kill for some stories of her first day at school, or her first piano recital, or her first curse word.

So yes, he understood how excited she was to have the books. But it didn't mean he had to like it.

"How the hell did you read so many of them in a week and a half?" Dean muttered, more to himself than anything else, shaking his head.

"I can't put them down," she admitted. "I mean…a lot of crap has happened to you guys, and…some of it sounds like it was heartbreaking and terrifying, but…it's impossible to stop reading. You two have the most interesting lives, as terrible as it sounds."

"Yeah," Dean scoffed derisively. "Our lives could be a damn TV show."

"I'm just saying," she amended, "that whoever figured out they could profit off of your crazy lives is smart. Maybe a little heartless, but smart."

"His name was actually Chuck," Sam cut in, looking incredibly uncomfortable, as one probably would after finding out their niece was reading books that detailed all of one's endeavors, sexual or otherwise. "He wasn't heartless. Definitely something a little off with him, but not heartless."

"Yeah, well, Chuck's got one thing way wrong in all of these books," Sophie said.

Dean raised his eyebrow. As far as he knew, Chuck had gotten pretty much every single detail of his books right, thanks to his creepy prophet powers. "What's that?"

"I don't think there's any homoerotic tension between you and Sam," she said matter-of-factly. "And I would know. I just did a project on it for school."

"Oh, for the love of God," Dean said, throwing his hands up and walking out of the room, and as he disappeared into the kitchen, he was grumbling suggestions about what Chuck could go do to himself that appropriately rhymed with the author's name.

Sophie was grinning as she watched him go, and then she turned back to Sam. "Seriously, Sam? _Ruby_?"

"She was hotter as a brunette," he grumbled. "I should go make sure Dean hasn't set fire to all those books."

He walked away, and Sophie, feeling like a weight had just been lifted off her shoulders, went back to her room to continue reading.

* * *

Two months went by in relative normality. Sam and Dean went on hunts, Sophie went to school, Cas watched movies. There was a rhythm to life that Sophie hadn't had since her mom died. And it was nice, finally feeling comfortable with someone. She was starting to feel like Dean's daughter and like Sam's niece; she was starting to feel like family.

And everything was going great until student government elections.

Sophie had quickly become a beloved member of the student body. Although Jack, Jamie, and Harry remained her closest friends, especially Jack, everyone else soon came to like her. She had a magnetic personality, a lovable mixture of quiet, smart, kind, and witty, and she quickly grew onto her teachers and classmates.

So when the sophomore class president Elise Thompson had to step down from her position because she got caught with pot on campus, and the current vice president Mike Taylor didn't want to take on the responsibility of president, Principal Grayling declared there would be an election to select a president for the spring semester. And suddenly people were asking Sophie if she was going to run.

At first, she'd staunchly said no. After all, she was new, and she didn't really want to disrupt the school anymore than she already had with her now infamous feud with Mason. But the more people asked her, the more she considered it. She was good with people, and she was smart, and she had leadership skills. And admittedly, student government was something normal teenagers did. So why shouldn't she?

It was Jack who finally convinced her. They were sitting down at lunch when he asked, out of the blue, "So what's your slogan?"

She gave him a confused look. "My slogan?"

"Yeah, your campaign slogan? For class president?"

Sophie sighed. "I don't even know if I'm doing that, Jack," she said, annoyed.

"S, c'mon. You're the best one for the job."

"How do you know that?" Sophie asked, saying it jokingly but actually wondering in the back of her mind.

"Because you're smart, you don't take crap from people, you want to do what's best for everyone, and people like you and respect you," he rattled off without missing a beat. "Plus, if you don't run, Mason's going to win."

At that, Sophie's head snapped up. "Mason's running?"

Jack cracked a grin. "Oh. Now you're interested?"

"Mason can't be president," Sophie said shortly. "He's an asshole."

"We've established that pretty securely," Jack said, his grin widening a little. "The question is, is him being in the running enough to motivate Sophie Winchester to run as well?"

Sophie only hesitated for a moment. "Yes. Yes it is. Put me on the ballot."

Apparently, news that she was running for president circulated quickly, as news usually does in a small school. In chemistry the next period a few classmates came up to her and said they were glad she was running and that they were definitely voting for her. She smiled, thinking that maybe this was a good decision.

Jack had to leave early to go to a doctor's appointment, so Sophie walked alone to gym class. It was cold, customary for early February in Kansas, and it had snowed the entire night and into the morning, so she was bundled under a sweater, a jacket, and a beanie. The wind picked up as she crossed the quad, and she bent her head down, staring at her feet as she trudged towards the gym, glad that they were just going to play an indoor game of kickball that day.

Before she made it inside, though, she felt someone grab her backpack and yank her off to the side of the gym building. Before she could yell, whoever had grabbed her let go, and she was slung into a pile of snow, causing her backpack to fall off and the cold to seep through her clothes.

Shivering, she quickly scrambled to her feet and tried to brush as much snow as she could off of her body before looking for the culprit. She supposed she should've been less surprised to see Mason standing before her, a hard glint in his eyes.

She shoved her icy hands into her pockets and glared at him. "What the hell do you want, Mason?" she snapped. "It's freezing and we have gym."

"No, you and I have got something to settle here," he shot back. "I'm going to be the next class president, and you're going to back off. Got it?"

Sophie rolled her eyes. "Seriously, Mason? This is about _student government_? You need to reprioritize your life."

She was shocked when he leaned forward and pushed her against the building roughly. She was so surprised by the suddenness of the movement that she didn't immediately retaliate. "I don't need to do anything except win class president," he practically hissed at her. "Class president means that next year I'll be eligible for school president during senior year, and all the school presidents get to go to a conference in Washington, D.C. All of my brothers have made it to that conference, and that's where they got recommendation letters for colleges. So I have to go there, too."

Sophie pushed him off of her, trying not to let her teeth chatter. "Then win the election," she spat, more annoyed than anything else. It wasn't going to be easy to warm up after the ice bath Mason had just given her. "But I'm not taking my name off the ballot just so you can kiss a bunch of policy makers' asses to get into a college you're not smart enough to get into on your own."

She turned to leave, which she usually did after a bitch match with Mason, but this time was different. He grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back, eliciting a surprised yelp from her. He spun her around so that they were face to face, and then he grabbed her shoulders with both hands and used all of his force to throw her onto the ground. This time, she didn't land in a pile of snow, but on a slick sheet of ice on top of the rocky asphalt, and when her head cracked against the ground she felt her lip split open and begin to bleed.

"Consider that your warning, Winchester," Mason snapped as she slowly made her way onto her knees, a trail of blood glistening crimson in the snow. "Back off. I mean it."

He turned away from her, looking satisfied, a smug grin on his face. Her eyes narrowed, and as Mason began to leave she stood up and delivered a swift kick to the back of his right knee. Too surprised to make a sound, he collapsed onto all fours into the snow, at which time Sophie moved herself in front of him and threw her elbow into his face, feeling the sickening crunch of his nose as she broke it. He howled in pain, one hand on the ground to keep him upright, the other holding his bleeding nose.

Satisfied, she grabbed her backpack and turned to walk away, but then she heard Mason scrambling to his feet and she turned just as he lunged at her. The training with Sam and Dean kicked in, and she easily sidestepped him, watching as Mason flailed past her and slipped on the same patch of ice she'd busted her lip on. He fell back on all fours, winded, and she walked up to him and ended it by kicking him hard in the ribs, knocking him flat into the snow.

She stood over his splayed body, a thick stream of blood staining her lip and chin, but not nearly as bad as the waterfall gushing out of Mason's nose. "Consider that _your _warning," she said coolly. "We're doing this election fair and square. And if you touch me again, I'll break more than just your nose."

This time, she slung her backpack over her shoulder, and left him groaning in the snow.

**Ahhhhh thank you guys so much for 200 reviews! All of your feedback has been so helpful and encouraging! You guys rock. **

**Also, I hope you're excited for the fallout of Sophie's inevitable fight with Mason. Good stuff.**

**Thanks as always for reading! ~ Lacey :)**


	30. Chapter 30: No Hangnails

_Chapter 30: No Hangnails_

Feeling like she was on some sort of victorious high, Sophie made a beeline towards the parking lot. There was no way she could go to gym looking like she did, and she didn't want to answer any questions about the blood on her face. She made her way through the snow, arriving at her car in a few minutes. She pulled the keys out of her pocket and unlocked the door, tossing her backpack into the backseat as she slid into the driver's side and locked the door back.

She took a deep breath, the adrenaline slowly fizzling out as her body began to warm up. Suddenly she could feel the stinging pain in her lip, and she quickly grabbed some tissues she always kept in her glove compartment and tried to clean herself up some. It hurt to drag the tissue across her lip, but she did her best with what she had. When she was done, she looked into her rearview mirror. The cut in her lip didn't look bad enough to warrant stitches, but it was still pretty bad. It could use some disinfectant and maybe a butterfly bandage, and the bruising that was already forming around it didn't look that great either.

Sophie sighed and balled up a handful of tissues to keep pressure on her lip as she drove home. She thanked her lucky stars that Sam and Dean had left for a hunt that morning, because she didn't really feel like explaining everything to them. With any luck, her lip would be healed by the time they got back, and there'd be nothing to explain.

Annoyed at the pain constantly shooting through her mouth and jaw, she turned on the car, let the engine warm up for a couple minutes, and then pulled out of the parking lot and began driving home. The only comforting thought was that Mason was certainly in a lot more pain than she was.

She didn't bother parking in the garage, a common habit of hers whenever Sam and Dean were out of town. She parked right outside the main entrance to the bunker, grabbed her backpack, and then made her way into the bunker and down the stairs that led into the main room.

She was so focused on making sure she kept the now incredibly bloodied handful of tissues pressed firmly against her lip that she didn't see the two people sitting at the big table in the main room. Instead, when she got to the bottom of the stairs, she heard a familiar voice say, "You're home from school earlier than usual."

Her head snapped up to see Sam and Dean both at the table. Neither of them had looked up at her; Sam's eyes were glued to his laptop and Dean was scouring a newspaper. Her heartbeat tripled in speed as she stared in panic at the clump of bloodied tissues in her hand, which she quickly dumped into the trashcan conveniently located a couple feet from her.

"Yeah, gym was cancelled," she said carefully, quickly taking down her hair from its ponytail and moving it so it fell partially across her face to cover her mouth and walking slowly so that she'd pass behind Dean on her way to her room. "What happened to your hunt?"

She cringed as she spoke; each word physically hurt as it passed through her mouth, and she could tell her voice sounded different. She wanted to kick herself.

"A couple hunter friends who were already in the area called to tell us they had it covered," Sam said, still looking at his screen. "We're going to help with some research from here."

She felt relieved. If Sam hadn't noticed the change in her voice, there was no way Dean would.

As if he could read her mind, Dean lifted his head from the newspaper and turned just as she passed. Her back was to him, though, and she thought she was safe until he said, "You sound different, kiddo. You sick?"

"Nope," Sophie said, and then she mentally cursed. Her _nope _had sounded more like _nobe_, the pain in her face refusing to let her pronounce her words properly.

She knew it was probably game over when she heard Dean push his chair back. "Wait a sec," he said. "Why's your hair down?"

She phrased each word as carefully as she possibly could. "What's so weird about my hair being down?"

"You never wear it down to school," he noted, and if she hadn't been trying to avoid him seeing her, she would've been touched he'd noticed something like that about her. "And you won't look at either of us."

Sophie sighed. Now it was definitely game over.

When she turned around, she saw the look of surprise that came over Dean's face as his eyes absorbed the damage to her face. Sam stood up from his seat, the research forgotten, and after a few moments, Dean's expression turned to anger.

"Mason," he said. It wasn't a question.

"It was stupid," Sophie started, knowing there was no point in lying. "He found out I was running against him for class president and then we—"

"I don't care why he did anything, I'm going to kill him," Dean said, walking up to her to get a better look, reaching a hand up and gently turning Sophie's face so he could see the busted lip.

Sam, who had walked over to their side of the table, took one look at the gash and said, "I'm going to go get a first-aid kit."

"No, Sam, it's not that—" Sophie protested, but he was already gone.

She couldn't meet Dean's eyes. His thumb tenderly brushed under the cut, and she couldn't help but flinch at the surprising pain it wrought, even though he hadn't even touched the actual wound. "Sorry," he said, quickly taking his hand away from her face, his jaw taut.

"It's not that bad," she said again, avoiding his eyes.

"He clocked you pretty good," he said, his concerned words filled with a suppressed rage. "This bruise is going to be pretty terrible."

"He didn't hit me," Sophie said. "He…pushed me." Dean lifted his eyebrow, giving her a look that clearly told her to cut the crap. "Okay, well, it was more like he threw me to the ground. But—"

"I'm going to kill him," Dean repeated flatly, his words relatively calm despite his eyes being filled with a furious blaze.

"You're not letting me finish," Sophie huffed, looking up at him. "I might have a split lip, but he now has a bruised knee, a broken nose, and if we're lucky, a cracked rib. The only reason he was even able to throw me to the ground at first was because he caught me off guard. That won't happen again."

"You're right," Dean said gruffly, his voice still angry. "It won't happen again because I'm going to kill him." But then he looked at Sophie's face, her eyes wide and defiant, and for some reason, he felt a tinge of pride. "But I'm glad you taught him a lesson."

She gave a small grin, her eyes brightening a little bit, and something about her grinning with a busted lip was somewhat adorable to Dean. "You really should've seen me, Dean," she said excitedly. "He was all like, 'Consider that your warning, Winchester,' and then I handed his ass to him and I was all like, 'Consider that _your_ warning.'"

As much as Dean didn't want to, he chuckled. "You know, I actually would have liked to see those skills we've been working on put into action. I'd just rather it didn't have to end with you getting hurt," he said, gesturing to her mouth.

"But hunters get hurt all the time," she said. "It's part of the life. This is nothing compared to what happens a lot of the time."

Dean dropped his smile. He hated hearing her referring to hunting as _the life_. It was too…casual. Too inclusive. And he didn't want her included in that part of the world. "Yeah, Soph, but you're not a hunter, you're a high school student. So we're not making this a regular thing, am I clear?"

She nodded, reaching up to gently feel her lip. "Crystal. But I'd like to reiterate that this is totally not my fault. He jumped me, got one shot in, and then I just defended myself."

Dean just nodded, grabbing her hand and pushing it away from her face. "I'm talking to this dick as soon as we get your face to stop bleeding. And just so you know, I'm talking with my fist."

"No, Dean, c'mon," Sophie said, her voice bordering on whining. "This is my problem. I mean, Mason is most likely still lying in the snow behind the gym crying like a baby. I can handle this."

"You're sitting in front of me with a split lip and a soon-to-be-gigantic bruise, Soph," Dean said, the volume of his voice rising. "I think I'm sort of obliged to interfere now and point out that you really don't seem like you've got this all handled."

"Dean, please," Sophie said, sounding desperate. "I've got this. Mason and I had a harmless schoolyard fight, and I came out on top by a mile. I really am able to handle him. I promise, nothing like this will ever happen again."

Dean looked at her carefully, his eyes looking so steadily into hers that it was hard for her not to look away. "Why are you so determined to do this on your own?" he asked, his voice lower. "One talk with me and he'd be too scared to even look at you."

Sophie opened her mouth to answer when Sam came back into the room with first aid supplies in his hand. As he set it down on the table next to her, he turned to Dean. "Are we murdering Mason before or after we clean her up?" he asked, only partly jokingly.

Dean kept his eyes on Sophie. Her eyes, so identical to his own, pleaded with him. Dean shook his head, as if he couldn't believe he was saying it himself. "We're not killing him," he said. And then he looked at Sophie with a hard expression. "But if anything even close to this happens ever again, we're stepping in, _capiche_?" Sophie nodded, looking relieved. "I'm serious, Soph. I see so much as a hangnail on your finger, and Sam and I are going to take a visit to that son of a bitch's house. Probably in the middle of the night. With rifles."

"Got it," she replied, grinning. "No hangnails."

Sam looked at Dean in disbelief. "Are you serious? All this talk about murder and castration, and when she shows up with half her face covered in blood you're still going to let her fight this fight with that kid?"

He looked at Sophie, and then back at Sam. "She broke his nose. And possibly a rib."

"And probably caused a certain degree of damage to his knee," she chimed in.

"She's not helpless," Dean continued, grinning slightly at her. "I say we let her fight her battle. She wants to."

Sam looked at Dean in exasperation, clearly not agreeing with him at all. Then he looked back at Sophie, who was still fighting to stop the bleeding. He exhaled loudly and glared at Dean. "This discussion isn't over," he grumbled, moving towards Sophie with some disinfectant.

"Sure thing, wifey," Dean replied, rolling his eyes as Sam dabbed some medicine onto Sophie's lip and partially covered it with a butterfly bandage before handing her an ice pack.

When he was done, she jumped off the table and looked up at the two of them. "Thank you," she finally said. "For caring enough to try and understand why this is my thing to deal with. You guys save the whole world, and that's great and super cool, it really is. But I...I don't know, I want to be the one to save myself when it comes to Mason. So thanks."

Then she turned around and disappeared down the hall where her room was.

Dean watched her go and then turned to look at Sam.

"I love her," he said, voicing aloud the thought he'd been thinking for a while now.

Sam, who'd had a whole speech planned in his head about why they needed to interfere in Sophie's personal life, looked back in shock at his brother, the father of the girl they'd just patched up and sent on her way, the man who had clearly loved Sophie since day one and simply hadn't been able to voice the feeling until now.

And even though he tried not to, Sam gave a little grin.

"Me too."

* * *

The next day at school, Sophie was grateful to see that Jack wasn't in Brit lit. She still hadn't figured out how to explain the busted lip to him, because she knew she sure as hell wasn't going to tell him the truth about her scuffle with Mason.

Dean she had been confident about winning over; as protective as he was, he understood the need to be able to stand up for yourself and fight your own battles. Jack, however, was forever stuck in the world of books, where justice needed to prevail and chivalry needed to be propagated. And while Sophie had no problem with chivalry and always appreciated a knight in shining armor, she wanted to keep Jack as far out of this conflict as she could. And that wasn't very likely to happen if he saw her with a busted lip.

She had been hoping to get a good look at Mason in class, but it appeared that he wasn't there either. She was a little bit surprised, and for the whole class she wondered if maybe she had hurt him a little too much.

But, when she was walking out of the classroom and she felt a hand grab her elbow, she realized that was not the case.

The hand that had grabbed her yanked her to the side of the door and towards a row of lockers, and when she looked over she set her glaring eyes onto Mason's. She ripped her arm out of his grip. "You really want to go for round two?" she challenged.

If looks could kill, she'd have been dead ten times over. "No," Mason growled, and Sophie focused in on his disgustingly bruised, crooked nose and the resulting black eyes. He looked terrible, and she could practically see Dean's proud grin. A part of her wished she could take a picture to show him. "I want us to get our stories straight."

Sophie smirked. "Don't want the world knowing you got your ass kicked by a girl a hundred pounds lighter and a foot shorter than you?"

"Just as much as you don't want your lover boy Hemingway knowing you keep going head to head with his sister's ex-boyfriend," Mason hissed.

Sophie stared at him for a moment, wondering if this was some sort of a power play. After a moment, she decided it wasn't. Mason was just a big, dumb jock whose pride couldn't handle the school finding out Sophie Winchester had kicked his ass. "What sort of story do you have in mind?"

"You slipped on ice on the way to your car," Mason suggested. "I got mugged."

Sophie rolled her eyes. "The ice thing works for me," she admitted. "But a mugging? Are you stupid? Muggings include police investigations and official statements and potential arrests. If I get _this_," she said, pointing towards her mouth, "for doing something as idiotic as fake slipping on ice, you're going to have to say you fake did something pretty damn dumb to mess your face up like that."

Mason looked like he wanted to hit her, but he did nothing, just glared. "A biking accident," he finally said. "I stole my older brother's motorcycle, took a sharp turn, and flew off of it."

"Better," Sophie said, grinning. "And you didn't call the police. You fixed the bike up, took it back home, and then patched yourself up."

She kept grinning as Mason nodded tensely.

"Alright then," she said, nodding back at him. "Case closed."

She turned to go to her next class, but Mason's hand grabbed her elbow again, turning her around. He looked at her, angry, emasculated, and…something else. Maybe humbled. "I won't touch you again," he said, surprising her. "I'm going to kick your ass in that election, but I won't touch you again."

He let go of her and walked off, leaving her behind in shock.

**Finally, some usage of the 'L' word. We know it's tough for these Winchesters to say it.**

**Also, I know many of you are probably like-no, no, Dean totally would've Hulked out on Mason. My interpretation of Dean, however, is that he's the kind of man who understands exactly how Sophie feels, and he sees that she is a very capable person, partially because of him and paritally because of the person she is. So I think it's not too far off to say he'd have given Sophie some room to fight her own battle, even though his gut reaction is to rip Mason limb from limb. And I think that's part of him figuring out fatherhood; riding the fine line between letting Sophie be her own person and stepping in when necessary.**

**Also, as awful as Mason is, he's a minor, so it's not like Dean could've/would've done all that much anyway.**

**Anywho-the beginning of a huge new plotline begins next chapter, and it'll pretty much carry this story to its end, so get ready. There's going to be a new antagonist...someone (something?) far worse than Mason. Get ready. ~ Lacey :)**


	31. Chapter 31: Raleigh

_Chapter 31: Raleigh_

Dean and Sam were both lying down in their separate motel beds, frustrated and exhausted.

"Look, all I'm saying is, we've been here for over two weeks," Sam said, staring at the ceiling, a book he'd been using for research on and off collapsed forlornly on his chest. "If we haven't solved this thing by now, I don't know if we ever will."

Dean was staring at the ceiling too, but his eyes were narrowed and glaring at nothing. "People are dying, Sam," he snapped. "We can't drop this."

"Sophie's worried," Sam tried. "She won't say it, but you can hear it in her voice over the phone."

"Yeah, well, she should be worried," Dean grumbled. "Because we're not leaving here until we figure this thing out."

"We should probably call her," Sam noted after a moment. "It's been over a day."

Dean heaved a big sigh. "Yeah. It just sucks having to keep telling her that we have no idea when we'll be back."

Sam didn't reply, and Dean slowly lifted himself off the bed and rummaged through his pocket to find his phone. It had been almost two months since the incident with Mason, and things had gone back to normal.

In fact, they were better than normal. Sophie had said that Mason was so embarrassed by the can of whoop ass she'd opened on him that for the most part, he'd left her to her own devices. She'd ended up winning the election for class president, salt in the wound for the guy who'd busted her lip open, and ever since she'd been as happy as ever at school. It was almost unnatural how much his kid enjoyed school and education and learning, but he liked that about her.

So yeah, things with Sophie were great. Better than Dean could have ever imagined.

So he hated when hunting brought him back to the reality that there was more to his life than making sure his daughter steered clear of the school bully.

He grumpily flipped open his phone and dialed Sophie's number. She picked up after two rings. "Hey," she said brightly. Too brightly, he noted. It was the kind of voice you used when you were masking what you really felt.

He'd practically invented that voice.

"Hey, kiddo," he said, trying to not sound as frustrated as he felt. "How're things going?"

"Oh you know, same old same old," Sophie joked. "Jamie keeps bugging me about going shopping for the dance I'm not going to, my vice president doesn't know the difference between _there_, _their_, and _they're_, Cas and I are finally watching all the Harry Potter movies, and Jack and I are seeing who can finish reading _Les Misérables_ first."

Unable to help himself, Dean gave a chuckle. It was funny how even when something as daunting as an unsolvable case was on his mind, Sophie had a knack for making him laugh. "You're having a race to finish a book?"

"Not just any book," Sophie responded, sounding mildly offended. "One of, if not the most important pieces of literature ever written. And it's 1,500 pages!"

Dean shook his head in disbelief. "You might have just surpassed Sam as the nerdiest person I know."

"Thank you," Sophie responded, sounding proud. "So how're things in your neck of the woods?"

"We're not making much headway," Dean admitted.

"Ah," Sophie said.

Dean knew the only reason she wasn't saying anymore was because she didn't want him to hear she was disappointed. "Sorry, kiddo, I don't want to lie to you. This one could be a long one."

"Remind me again what exactly this case is?" Sophie asked.

Dean let out a breath. He and Sophie had an understanding in which as long as she expressed no more interest in a case than the general details, he would give them to her. "People have been dying pretty terrible deaths in Raleigh, North Carolina over the past month or so, and all of the deaths have been related to the number one somehow," Dean said, "and we're pretty sure it's a demon. And that's all we've got."

"Two weeks and that's all you've got?" she asked. She didn't sound mean or insulting; she sounded disappointed and a little bit disbelieving. Dean didn't blame her, mostly because he felt the same way. It had been a long time since the Winchesters had been this stumped.

"Yeah," Dean said. "We're doing all we can. You're good back home?"

"Yep," Sophie sighed. "All is well at the Batcave. Well, except for Cas. He's being moody because he just found out Dumbledore dies."

Dean grinned. "Poor guy."

"He didn't see it coming at all," Sophie sighed fondly. She paused for a moment. "So…you said you were in Raleigh?"

"Yeah," Dean said. "Why?"

"I don't know," she said meekly. "Raleigh's only twenty minutes from Apex."

Dean felt the exhaustion he and Sam had been experiencing begin to seep back into his bones. "Yeah, kiddo, I know."

"This demon thing…is it related to me?"

"No," Dean replied quickly. "And don't ever think it is, okay? Demons are everywhere. The fact one is causing trouble close to where you used to live has nothing to do with you. It's just a crappy coincidence."

"Okay," she said, but he could hear the uncertainty in her voice. "You'd tell me if it did have anything to do with me, though, wouldn't you?"

"Of course," he lied. He was pretty sure that this case had nothing to do with Sophie, but even if it did he wouldn't tell her. She didn't need more to worry about than she already did.

He must've been convincing enough, because he heard Sophie let out a relieved breath. "Okay. Well, I actually need to run. Jack and Jamie and Harry and I are going to go see this new movie about zombies in half an hour. Apparently, it's supposed to scare the crap out of me."

Dean frowned. "So it's a double date?"

She groaned. "God, Dean, how many times do I have to tell you, Jack and I aren't—"

"Yeah, you keep telling yourself that," Dean grumbled into the phone. "And if you care about him at all, you won't tell me when you two actually start dating, because then it's open season on teenage boyfriends, got it?"

Dean could practically hear her eyes roll. "Whatever. Either way, I need to go. Tell Sam I said hi!"

He took the phone away from his ear. "Soph says hi, Sammy."

Sam looked up from the book he'd put his nose back in. "Hi back," he called, sounding a bit distracted.

Dean put the phone back to his ear. "He says don't go on the date."

"It's not a date," Sophie groaned, knowing it was futile.

Grinning, Dean gave a little chuckle. "Alright, kid, I'll let you go. Stay safe, okay?"

"No, _you _stay safe," she said, and then she hung up.

Dean let out a huge breath as he tossed the phone onto the bed and leaned back against the pillows. "Maybe it's time we actually met this Jack kid," he said. "I need to know what he looks like so that I can make sure I'm strangling the right person when it comes time."

"Yeah, probably," Sam said, and this time there was no mistaking it; he sounded incredibly distracted.

Dean looked over at him. "Hello, Earth to Sammy? I just threatened to squeeze the life out of a teenage boy. Usually you have more of an opinion on stuff like that."

Sam just nodded, his eyes narrowed as he combed through the book. "Sure, of course."

Now Dean was interested. He lifted himself back into a sitting position and snapped his fingers, causing Sam to look up. "Alright, Einstein, what's going on in that long-haired head of yours?"

Sam took a deep breath. "What do you know about Beelzebub?"

Dean just stared at him, wondering if maybe his brother had finally lost his mind. But he still answered. "Beelzebub is Lucifer right? And last time I checked, Lucifer's in the Cage, where he belongs."

"Yeah, I'm not so sure about that," Sam said. "Well, I mean, Lucifer is still in the Cage. But most of the lore points to Beelzebub as a totally separate being from Lucifer. I mean, if you're looking at what Binsfield says—"

"Who?" Dean cut in, baffled.

"Binsfield," Sam repeated impatiently. "The guy who identified that the Seven Deadly Sins were actually demons. Remember those guys?"

"Sure do," Dean replied, thinking back to that night years before when he and Sam had confronted the seven demons, only to be saved by Ruby, a demon herself. It felt like a lifetime ago.

"Well, according to Binsfield, Beelzebub was Gluttony."

"Well, why are we even talking about him then?" Dean asked, annoyed. "All seven of them are dead now, I do remember that. Case closed."

Sam sat up, flipping through a couple pages in his book. "What if Binsfield was wrong, and Beelzebub wasn't one of the seven deadly sins? There are so many different classifications of demons, it's possible he got them mixed up."

"Okay, you're going to need to rewind a bit," Dean said, deciding to entertain whatever thought process Sam was going through. "So you think this Beelzebub could be responsible for the deaths around here. Why?"

"All of the victims around here…they're all pretty random. Different genders, races, socioeconomic classes…. But there's one similarity."

"Yeah," Dean said, wondering if Sam was losing his touch. "A demon killed them."

"That," Sam replied slowly, "and all of them were found near the number one. Apartment number one, one o'clock on an analog clock, a billboard that read _all for one and one for all_."

"Sam, c'mon, help connect the dots here," Dean said, still confused.

"Okay, hear me out," Sam said, sitting up. "Let's say Binsfield was wrong, and the seven deadly sins weren't actually Beelzebub and six other terrible demons. Maybe those demons are separate, and someone else found that out and reclassified the demons correctly."

"And who might that be?" Dean asked.

Sam lifted the book he'd been reading, and Dean glanced at it. _Marvelous History _by Sebastian Michaelis. "Okay," Dean said slowly. "What does this Michaelis say about demons, then?"

"He said there are different hierarchies," Sam explained. "And within each hierarchy, there's a sort of a gradation of demons, starting with a Big Bad at the top and going down until you get the least evil."

Dean nodded, seeming to understand. "I take it Beelzebub is the Big Bad of the First Hierarchy?"

"Close," Sam said. "He's second only to Lucifer. And it looks like he really wants to claim the first rank for his own now that Lucifer's locked back in the Cage."

"Okay," Dean said slowly. "So…you think that's what we're dealing with? I don't know, Sam, it's kind of a huge leap, to say that because these people are found near the number one they must have been killed by the worst active demon of the First Hierarchy of demons. We've made a lot of assumptions in our day, but this one's a bit of a stretch."

Sam flipped through more of the book, trying to find a particular page. "I thought so too, because there are still a lot of unanswered questions. Why is he supposedly randomly killing? I mean, Lucifer's been back in the Cage now for years. Why would Beelzebub become active now? Why here?" he said. "And then I saw this."

He opened the book and found a certain page, offering it to Dean, who stood up and grabbed it from him. Dean took a good look at the page. It described Beelzebub in all his menacing power, but those words weren't what caught Dean's eye. It was the one word scribbled in the margins, undoubtedly made by one of the Men of Letters years before.

_Raleigh_.

"Sam," Dean said, eyes growing a bit wider. "You may have just solved our case."

* * *

Their next clue came sooner than either of them could have expected.

Later that night, a message came in through their radio. A woman had made a 911 call screaming about being chased by a man with black eyes. Sam and Dean had already been grabbing the keys and their weapons when they heard the location: First Street.

With a greater sense of urgency, they hopped into the Impala and peeled out of the motel parking lot, speeding towards the street, grateful they were barely a minute from First Street and knowing that they'd get their nearly ten minutes before the first law enforcement officers did.

When they pulled up to the street, the first thing they noticed was that there was a particularly sketchy looking alley that jutted off from the street. Dean huffed as he quickly parked along the side of the road. "Why is it always a dark alley?" he grumbled.

Sam didn't answer. Wordlessly, they got out of the Impala, weapons in hand, and stood in front of the alley. It was poorly lit, and it curved as it went farther into the Raleigh streets, twisting out of sight so that the Winchesters couldn't see where it ended.

"How do we even know this is where we're supposed to be?" Sam said, feeling a little desperate. "Maybe the attack was on another part of First Street."

In answer, there was a high pitched female scream that emanated from the alley. Without so much as blinking, Sam and Dean began to run towards the sound. As they rounded the corner, they saw a dimly lit scene in front of them, and they froze.

A large man, nearly six and a half feet tall, held a terrified looking woman in his grasp, a large, pointy knife at her throat. She was crying, tears falling down her face, her eyes wide with terror. The man had his head down, his face cast in shadow, the only thing visible being his smirking mouth.

"Winchesters," he boomed in a deep voice that seemed to bounce off the walls and shake their bones. "Took you long enough."

And then without warning, he slashed at the woman's throat, and before Sam and Dean could so much as let their jaws drop open in shock she collapsed at the man's feet, blood spurting from her neck, dead.

Sam and Dean stared in shock at her body, so barely removed from life that the tears she had been producing were still falling down her face. Dean was the first to recover. "You son of a bitch," he snarled, grabbed his angel blade and running towards the hulking figure.

The man just watched Dean charge with mild interest, and then, as if he had decided he was bored, he flicked his wrist, and suddenly Dean was flying into a brick wall.

"Dean!" Sam yelled, stepping forward, and the man just laughed and flicked another wrist, sending Sam flying into the other wall.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen," he tittered, leaning down and wiping the blood from his knife off on the dead woman's own shirt. "Let's be civil now."

Dean scrambled to his feet, trying to ignore the pain in his head that would surely result in a large bruise. "You're Beelzebub," he said.

The man stepped into better light, and Dean was able to get a good look at his face just as the man rolled his eyes. "Seriously, a few thousand years and you'd think you humans would be able to pronounce my name right. It's _Bee-el-ze-bub_, not _Beelz-bub_. Come on."

"How about I just call you douchebag and we'll leave it at that?" Dean spat.

Beelzebub slid his knife into his belt loop. "Now Dean, let's not let our emotions get the best of us."

"You've been killing a lot of innocent people," Dean snarled, looking at the poor woman on the ground. "You're officially number one on my hit list. And trust me, buddy, that's not a place you want to be. Ask all the other dead sons of bitches who have been there."

Beelzebub laughed. "Glad to see you haven't lost your edge, Dean. Word on the street is that you'd gotten soft after finding out you've got yourself a bouncing baby girl. What's her name again? Sophia? Beautiful name, really, rolls right off the tongue—"

Hearing Sophie's name coming out of a demon's mouth filled Dean with rage, and he launched himself at Beelzebub again. The demon just laughed, this time sending Dean harder into the wall. He groaned as he hit the ground, his head spinning, his body aching.

"I guess I hit a nerve," the demon noted in mild interest. "It's a shame I'm unable to track Sophia since you let your angel friend Castiel cloak her. I had my eye on her before, when she lived nearby and before you two knew about each other. I always thought it was such great luck that I had a Winchester child practically in my own backyard, because surely she'd be useful somehow. I think she would have been so much fun. Or, at least, it would have been fun to watch you as I ripped her limb from limb right in front of your eyes."

"I'll kill you first," Dean snapped, tasting blood in his mouth.

"All talk, no walk with you Winchesters," Beelzebub sighed. "Well, while you're both down for the count, we really must get down to business. Shall we?"

He clapped his hands, and suddenly they were in a large, grand living room, complete with dim lights and a roaring fire. Dean looked down in confusion to see he was securely tied to a large, cushiony chair. He looked up and saw Sam struggling against the bonds that tied him to his own chair.

Beelzebub was standing by the fire, stoking it calmly. He lifted his head, revealing a pair of handsome, piercing blue eyes and a mop of salt and pepper hair, and as he smiled, his eyes flashed black. "Now that all relevant parties are accounted for," he said. "Let's talk."

**Welcome to the story, Beelzebub!**

**Keep in mind this antagonist is mine, not the show's, and not anyone else's who might've used him in their respective stories. This is the path I've been meaning to go down since the beginning of the story, so I promise all of this is my doing and no one else's.**

**Also, generally speaking I only update on Saturdays, but this week is spring break so I've had some extra time on my hands. Hope you like the extra update! ~ Lacey :)**


	32. Chapter 32: Aren't You Satan's Bitch?

_Chapter 32: Aren't You Satan's Bitch?_

Dean was trying to ignore the pain that was shooting through every bone in his body as he glared at the demon in front of him. As tough as he was, being thrown into a brick wall twice wreaks all sort of havoc on a man's body. "What do you wanna talk about, Beezy?"

For the first time, the demon looked genuinely annoyed. "_Beelzebub_," he snapped.

Dean looked over at Sam. "Maybe we should call him Bubby. He looks like he could be a Bubby. Something about the chin, I think."

"Dean," Sam groaned. "Not the time."

Dean just looked back at Beelzebub. "Look, Bubby, I don't know what it is you're after, but I recommend killing us now if you think you're going to get any help from us, because it ain't gonna happen."

Beelzebub grinned. "Lucky for you, I don't need anything from you just yet." Beelzebub leaned the poker with which he'd been stoking the fire against the fireplace and sat himself in a large leather armchair. "But I've forgotten my manners. We should really get to know each other."

"I think I've already got our relationship pinned down," Dean said with mock thoughtfulness. "You're Bubby, a twisted demonic son of a bitch with a massive ego to compensate for your tiny you-know-what. And I'm Dean Winchester, your future murderer." Out of the corner of his eye, Dean saw Sam give him a _what the hell are you doing_ look, but Dean couldn't help it. Beelzebub had used Sophie against him, and for that he wasn't going to hold back.

But Beelzebub just guffawed. "I did hear about your odd sense of humor, Dean; about how the more you joke, the worse the situation you must be in." His eyes were bright with amusement. "You must realize you're in _quite _the pickle."

Dean glared. "What do you want?"

"It's quite simple, really," Beelzebub said. "I want to let Lucifer out of the Cage."

Both Sam and Dean's heads snapped to attention. That had not been what either of them had expected to hear.

"Lucifer?" Sam asked in shock. "As in_ the Devil_ Lucifer?"

"And here I thought you were the bright one, Sam," Beelzebub sighed with a dark twinkle in his eye.

Sam shook his head. "But aren't you Satan's bitch?"

Dean snorted; clearly Sam was taking Beelzebub's assault just as personally as he was. Beelzebub turned to glare at Sam, his eyes flashing black for a moment. Then he regained his composure. "I used to be tethered to Lucifer, it's true," he said, nodding. "Being of a greater rank than I in the First Hierarchy, he had power over me. I completed a lot of his more…unsavory errands. And then he went a step too far, got himself locked up in the Cage. But did I become the _de facto_ ruler of Hell?"

"Judging by your giant homicidal temper tantrum, I'm going to go out on a limb and say no," Dean said.

Beelzebub pursed his lips. "No. I became an errand boy for Lucifer with no Lucifer to send me out on errands. I had an abominable amount of free time on my hands. It's quite boring to be so powerful that you have others to do all of your work for you. So I spent my leisure time as you might expect; a little raping here, a little pillaging there. I pulled a few strings to get ISIS going because I thought things were getting a little quiet in the Middle East. And all this trouble with North Korea? All me. You know—child's play. I was bored." He heaved a big sigh. "And then you two had to start messing around with Heaven and Hell, you big, bumbling idiots."

Sam and Dean stared at him.

Beelzebub rolled his eyes. "You see, Dean, when you tortured your first soul in Hell and broke the seal that would allow Lucifer to eventually escape the Cage, I thought I finally had my chance."

"Your chance?" Sam asked.

"Yes," Beelzebub said. "My chance to kill Lucifer."

Dean's face was the mask of confusion. "You want to kill Lucifer? Aren't you guys both on Team Evil?"

"Have you learned nothing during your tenure as a hunter, Dean?" Beelzebub asked in an oddly patient way, as if he were talking to a toddler. "There is no black and white when it comes to Heaven and Hell—especially Hell. I had thought when Lucifer was shut in the Cage the first time that I would be free to rule like he did, but it turns out, in terms of the Hierarchy, I have no authority unless Lucifer is dead. And I thought I'd have that chance when you helped him escape the Cage, Dean. But Sam," Beelzebub said, snapping his head to glare at the younger Winchester, "you helped your idiot brother lock Lucifer back up. And there went my chance—gone."

"So you're killing innocent people because you're pissed off you missed your shot to rule Hell?" Dean remarked, eyebrows raised.

"No," Beelzebub replied, grinning. "I'm killing people because I have bided my time and built up my army of followers and I am finally ready to rule, and for that, I needed you. And if there's one thing I know, it's that if there is blood and carnage to be found, you would come."

"Me?" Dean asked, sounding genuinely surprised. "Why do you need me?"

"Both of you," Beelzebub said, a gleam in his eye. "Or rather, one of you. You see, I found a quick little ritual that should open the Cage and let Lucifer out so that I can kill him and finally gain my rightful place at the top of Hell's Hierarchy."

Dean didn't like the sound of _a quick little ritual_, especially when he and his little brother were helplessly tied up. "Cut to the chase, Bubby."

Beelzebub's eyes flashed in annoyance. Clearly he was not a fan of his nickname. "I need a soul that has been tested in the fires of Hell, has encountered Heaven, and has defeated Lucifer once before."

Dean narrowed his eyes. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Sam cleared his throat, his face grave. "He needs our souls, Dean."

Beelzebub clucked his tongue and shook his head. "No, no, not quite. But you're close, dear Sam. See, I only need one soul. But I want to make sure it's the _right_ soul. And both of you fit the bill. After all, you've both been to Heaven and Hell, and in your own way, you both assisted in defeating Lucifer once before."

Dean leaned back as best as he could in his chair. "If that's true, then why haven't you just taken one of our souls and run off? Why give us the monologue? I really hate when you guys monologue."

"Because," Beelzebub continued, "there are still some…kinks to be worked out, if you will. I've simply decided I needed to let you two know ahead of time, so that you could start discussing."

"Discussing?" Sam repeated. "Discussing what?"

"Why, which of you is going to give up your soul, of course," Beelzebub said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "The ritual requires the soul in question to willingly sacrifice itself for the deed, as most annoying ancient rituals do." He sighed. "It's a pity none of these spells allow one to simply yank the soul out of the body. It'd make things far easier."

At that, Dean laughed. "And why the hell would either Sam or I willingly give you our souls so that you could jailbreak the Devil? I mean, don't get me wrong, the world with a dead Lucifer would be pretty freaking awesome, but I have this feeling you don't feel like using your power to eradicate world hunger or forge world peace."

Beelzebub grinned maliciously. "Because if I don't have one of your souls, people continue dying. And it'll be blood on your hands."

Sam and Dean's eyes narrowed at the same time. "We've had blood on our hands before, and threats like this," Dean said shortly. "Sam and I aren't stupid enough to risk the end of humanity as we know it for a few people's lives. You're underestimating us."

Beelzebub looked thoughtful and mildly impressed. "Well, if that doesn't work, which I'm sure it won't, I'll find your daughter, pretty Sophia. Cloak or no cloak, I have eyes everywhere, and I will find her. And I will make you watch her experience torture like she's never imagined." His eyes took on a dark, almost lustful, sheen, and his voice grew deeper and more menacing, and for the first time Dean got the feeling that they were really in deep trouble. "And it's been a long, long time since I had a young, beautiful girl to play with. I feel as though one little slice of that porcelain, innocent skin and I may not be able to control myself. And oh, how I do appreciate the screams. Young girls scream so magnificently."

"You shut up, you son of a bitch," Dean growled, his veins spiked with rage. "You will never get close to laying a finger on her, that's a promise."

"A promise?" Beelzebub laughed. "Oh, Dean, you sure have me scared now."

"So what's the plan?" Sam asked, clearly trying to take the focus off Dean, who looked livid as he struggled against his bonds. "You keep us tied up here until one of us gives up?"

"No," Beelzebub said. "The ritual requires a very specific astrological phenomenon in order to take place, and according to my calculations, it won't occur for over a year from now."

Sam looked confused. "So you're keeping us here indefinitely?"

"No," Beelzebub said. "I'll keep you until one of you makes a choice. Once the choice is made and the deal is set, I will let you both go and live out your remaining time. After all, I'm not heartless."

Dean laughed humorlessly, his anger coming out as derision. "No one' making any deals tonight, Bubby," he chuckled. "If that's what you thought you'd achieve by luring us here with your serial killing streak, you're way dumber than you look."

Beelzebub had an evil glint in his eyes, and then he stood up from his chair and snapped his fingers. A man appeared in front of him, probably in his mid-fifties, with graying hair and terrified eyes. Before he could so much as open his mouth, Beelzebub had driven his knife through the old man, killing him instantly.

Sam and Dean struggled harder against their bonds. "What the hell?" Dean yelled.

"That was a random citizen," Beelzebub said coolly. "His name was Bill. He had a lovely wife named Tammy, and two daughters, Alexis and Amanda. He was a random man I plucked out of bed on this fine evening and slaughtered without a second thought. The first of as many as it takes until one of you surrenders your soul to me."

"No," Dean said, his eyes hard as he stared at the fallen body of the man. As terrible as it was, he couldn't give in. The possibility of letting Lucifer out and having Beelzebub in a position of power was too catastrophic; the death count would be in the billions. Dean knew he couldn't give in, and that the people Beelzebub killed in the process were collateral damage.

Dean looked at Sam, who seemed just as horrified as Dean felt, but with a heavy look in his eye. He, too, knew they couldn't cave in.

"Pity," Beelzebub sighed, snapping his fingers again. This time, a young woman appeared in front of him. She couldn't have been older than twenty-one, wearing a waitress' uniform, her hands shaking, her eyes wide with confusion.

"What just happened?" she squeaked out. "Am I dreaming? Am I drunk? Am I—"

Suddenly, Beelzebub's knife protruded from her abdomen, and Dean felt sick as she slid to the ground, collapsing on top of the other man's body with a _thunk_, blood dripping from her mouth, her blue eyes staring straight ahead unseeingly. "I can do this all day," the demon said slickly.

"You sick son of a bitch," Dean growled. "I will end you."

"Again with all of the talk, Dean," Beelzebub sighed, sounding bored. He snapped his fingers, and this time, a small boy appeared in front of the demon. He looked to be about Sophie's age, maybe a little bit younger.

But this time, Dean recognized him, and his heart stopped.

"Ben," Dean breathed.

Of course, Ben didn't recognize him. How could he, after Dean had made sure his and his mother's memories of him and the supernatural world were wiped clean?Instead, the boy just looked tired and terrified, like he had just been pulled from sleep into a real life nightmare, and Dean felt pure hatred and fear flare up inside of him as Beelzebub dragged the knife softly against Ben's skin, a knowing and bloodthirsty smile on his face.

Surprisingly, Sam was the first to speak up. "Let him go," he said in a dangerously calm voice. Sam knew just how much Ben meant to Dean, how much it would kill him to see Ben slaughtered in front of his eyes. "Let him go, and we'll try to figure something out."

Beelzebub smiled. He knew he'd won. "That's not how this works, Sam," he practically hissed. "I kill until someone gives in."

Ben's eyes were darting back and forth and all around him. "What's happening?" he asked, his voice shaking. "Where am I? Who are you people? Where's my mom?"

"Shhh, now," Beelzebub said in a disgustingly soothing voice, moving the knife to the boys cheek. "Mommy's next."

Dean pulled roughly against his constraints. "Don't you dare," he snarled, trying to keep the fear out of his voice. "I will kill you, you got that? _I will kill you._"

The demon ignored him. "And after dear old Lisa, I find Sophia. And what I do to her will make what I did to the lovely Braeden family look like utter mercy."

"Don't do it," Sam said, his voice rising. "We'll make some sort of deal, we'll find a way—"

Suddenly, the knife was back at Ben's throat, and tears were leaking out of the boy's eyes. "There is no other deal!" Beelzebub roared, his eyes filled with hellfire. "There is only what I want, or death for everyone you love or have ever cared about!"

As he moved the knife across Ben's neck, Dean reacted on pure instinct. "No! I accept your deal! You can use my soul! Just let him go!"

"Dean, no!" Sam yelled.

But Beelzebub only smiled, releasing the terrified Ben and touching the boy's head. "You won't remember a bit of this," he said, and then with a snap of his fingers, Ben was gone.

Dean was breathing heavily, his pulse racing, his vision filled with red. He stared in pure hate as Beelzebub approached him and bent down, placing his hand on Dean's chest, right over his furiously beating heart. Dean felt a sharp sting deep within his chest, like a lick of dark fire to his soul, and then Beelzebub pulled his hand away. Dean blinked, and realized his constraints were gone. He got up and made to lunge at Beelzebub with everything he had.

But then he froze. He and Sam were back in the alley with the body of the girl Beelzebub had first slain. The sound of sirens in the distance permeated the night; they had barely been gone for a minute, even though they'd been with Beelzebub for what felt like an hour.

And the bastard was nowhere to be seen.

**A lot is happening. Next chapter, will we see how Sophie reacts? Stay tuned, and thanks as always for reading and for your reviews! ~ Lacey :)**


	33. Chapter 33: The First Priority

**So, I'm sort of a huge St. Paddy's Day girl. My university is ridiculously big on celebrating it (perks of being an Irish Catholic, y'all), and I'm a redhead with a pathetically large collection of 'Kiss Me I'm Irish' tanks, so naturally it's sort of my jam. And because I don't drink or party...I'm celebrating by posting a surprise chapter! Hope you like it!**

_Chapter 33: The First Priority_

The ride back to the bunker was silent.

Or, at least, the two Winchesters sitting in the front seats were silent. The music, however, was far from silent, blasting at an alarming volume. But Sam didn't bother to ask Dean to turn it down. Every time he'd tried to say something to his older brother, Dean would just give him this look. It wasn't an angry look, or a sad look, or even an annoyed look. It was simply a look that told Sam that conversation wasn't an option at the moment.

So after they'd made a quick getaway from the police that had been flocking towards First Street and checked out of their motel room, Sam had simply called Sophie to tell her they were on their way home, and then they'd taken off.

Dean hadn't wanted to call Sophie. He didn't want to hear her voice, questioning and concerned.

Dean just wanted to think.

He was thinking about a lot of things. Part of his mind was thinking back to the time he'd spent with Lisa and Ben a few years before. They'd been a strange little quasi-family, but Dean had felt comfortable with them. Happy, even. He'd had a beautiful woman to fall asleep next to every night, and a kid to look after, even if Ben hadn't been his child biologically. He hadn't been truly surprised that it didn't last, but regardless, leaving them behind without their memories of him had been one of the hardest things Dean had ever done.

So of course, _of course_, he couldn't let Ben be murdered right in front of his eyes.

But then Dean thought back to Hell. The images and sensations that he had experienced during his four decades down below, the most vivid memories that he possessed, were forever etched into his mind. Even then, driving down a long stretch of highway with Motörhead blasting through the stereo, he could still feel the hooks piercing the skin, muscle, and bone in his legs and arms, the excruciating sensation of limbs being ripped and torn. Despair and agony had run more potently through his veins than blood.

He didn't know exactly what Beelzebub had meant by needing his soul to open the Cage. It wasn't like there had been a Q&amp;A session or an pamphlet detailing the step by step process. Would his soul get ripped from his body, leaving him a heartless, animalistic shell of a human being like Sam had been after he'd been dragged out of Hell? Or would he die yet again, his soul trapped in Hell doing whatever it was he had to do to free Lucifer?

Regardless of the logistics of Beelzebub's ritual, the thought of returning to Hell was unthinkable; in fact, if Dean tried to imagine going back, or somehow allowing his soul to bring a piece of Hell back to earth, his brain shut down and refused to let him into that territory.

But at the same time, he couldn't just let Beelzebub murder Ben. Imagining the look in Lisa's eyes when she discovered her son had been murdered—_that_ was unthinkable. Imagining the demon moving on to Lisa, killing her too—_that _was unthinkable. Imagining him tracking down Sophie, ripping her apart in front of Dean—that wasn't just unthinkable, it was an impossibility, because Dean knew that he would do anything and everything that it took to keep Beelzebub away from her.

She would never get hurt because Dean would simply sacrifice the world to keep her safe.

That would be enough, right?

Dean wished he could hit something, kick something, maybe stab something. He felt like a child again thinking the words, but he couldn't help it—it just wasn't fair. He'd just gotten Sophie, and they'd just managed to mesh their lives together, and it was _working_. They got along, they joked, they had conversations. He taught her how to drive and fight, and she seemed to teach him everything else.

Sophie didn't deserve to lose him after she had lost everyone else. Hell, _he _didn't deserve it; he was no saint, but he didn't deserve to find this kind of love and then be ripped away from it because of one demon with an ego problem.

It just wasn't fair.

* * *

When they pulled up to the bunker what felt like an eternity later, and Dean parked the car in the garage, both Winchesters sat in their seats, unmoving.

Dean eventually opened his mouth, staring straight ahead, unable to look into his brother's concerned eyes. "We can't tell her," he said, his voice gruff from lack of use.

"Dean…," Sam started sadly.

"We aren't saying anything to her," Dean said, this time more assertively, finally turning to look at Sam. "We don't even know how bad this is. I mean, it's probably pretty bad, but if it turns out there's some way to fix this and we worry her about this for no reason and she goes off and does something stupid and gets herself hurt…. I can't let that happen, Sammy. _We _can't let that happen."

Sam was quiet for a moment. "I know," he said eventually. "So…we don't tell her. For now."

Dean nodded, relieved he wouldn't have to put up more of a fight. He wasn't sure he had the energy for it. "Okay. Good."

With that, he opened the door to the Impala and began to make his way inside.

As they entered the bunker, Dean could hear muted sounds coming from the war room farther into their home. He dropped his duffle bag onto the table in the main room and tried to make out the voices.

"I just don't understand," a deep, familiar voice said. "Snape killed Dumbledore and did so many horrible things, and now I'm supposed to believe he's a good guy?"

There was a sound of laughter. Sophie. Just hearing her laugh felt like a punch to Dean's gut. "Cas, I told you, you need to just be quiet and watch or you'll miss it."

"It just doesn't make sense, why should we trust anything he has to—wait, what? Snape was in love with Lily?"

Another laugh hit Dean's ears. "I told you, just watch!"

Dean quietly walked towards the war room and peeked inside. Cas and Sophie were sitting next to each other, feet propped up on the table. Cas' trenchcoat was slung over the back of his chair and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows as he reached inside a large bowl of popcorn on Sophie's lap. Her hair was down and she was wearing her pajamas, her hand wrapped around a bottle of grape soda. They were chatting and conniving as they watched the movie, what appeared to be some Harry Potter film.

Dean backed out of the room quietly and made his way back to the main room, where Sam was unpacking a backpack full of books, including the one that had contained the essential clue that had helped the identify Beelzebub. He looked up as Dean walked back in. "She asleep?"

"No," Dean said, "she's watching a movie with Cas in the war room. I figured I'd wait till it was done to tell her we're back. They seem pretty into it."

"Sure," Sam said. He paused for a moment to keep unloading books, and then he seemed to think of something and lifted his head back up. "You know, we need to tell Cas. He could help, and he's going to know something's up anyway."

"Yeah, sure," Dean said tiredly. "We can fill him in. I think I'm going to grab a shower while we're waiting for Harry and Hermione over there. And then a lot of alcohol."

He left Sam and made his way to his room, closing the door behind him and then running his hand through his hair. After a moment of just standing there and staring into space, he walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower, waiting until it reached an all but scalding temperature before stripping off his clothing and stepping into the shower.

He must've been in the shower a lot longer than he thought, because by the time he'd gotten out of the shower, thrown on some clothes, and gotten a couple shots of whiskey coursing through his bloodstream, the movie was over and Sam was with Cas and Sophie in the main room.

When Dean came out, the first person he made eye contact with was Sophie. Her green eyes lit up when she saw him and she smiled warmly, and again he was struck with how much she looked like her mom. And for the first time since meeting Sophie, he wished there was some way he could bring Caroline Gardner back to life. Not that he had been happy to hear of her death; he had felt the exact opposite. But her dying had somehow brought Sophie to him, and Dean had wondered if maybe the car accident had been the universe's way of allowing him to know the daughter he otherwise might have never known existed.

But now, he wondered how much longer he'd be in Sophie's life, and he wished Sophie had her mom so that she wouldn't be parentless.

Sophie's smile waned when he didn't smile back at her, and her lips turned down into a slight frown. Before he could try to recover, she turned to Cas. "I'm going to go ahead and hit the sack," she said. "I hope you recover after finishing the Harry Potter movies."

"I have much to think about," Cas admitted, before enveloping Sophie with a short, surprisingly heartfelt hug. "Goodnight, little lion."

"Night, Cas," she said. She grabbed her backpack, which she had clearly just tossed into the corner of the room after getting back home from school, and the cardigan she'd slung over the back of a chair. "Goodnight Sam. Goodnight Dean. I'm glad you got back safely."

And then she was gone.

Dean groaned and sat down at the table.

Cas looked at the two of them, eyes narrowed. "I'm guessing you guys didn't cut the hunt off early because you lost interest."

Sam let out a long breath and glanced at Dean. "It's bad, Cas."

Suddenly, Dean realized he didn't want to hear Sam tell Cas about their meeting with Beelzebub or his decision to give up his soul to free Lucifer. He stood up from the table as quickly as he had sat down at it. "Sam, you tell Cas about how I screwed the pooch," he said. "I'm going to go talk to Sophie."

He left his brother and Cas sitting in the main room, knowing he was going to get an earful from the both of them later, and made his way to Sophie's room.

He stood outside of her door, leaning against the wall and taking a deep breath before knocking on the door.

"Come in," Sophie's voice echoed from the other side of the door.

Dean opened the door and walked in, marveling at how Sophie had managed to transform the empty little room during her time with them. Dainty lights were strung around her ceiling; a pink rug that Dean had reluctantly bought was spread out on the floor; the bed was covered in a pale yellow comforter; a large bookshelf filled with books, CDs, and little trinkets took up a majority of space on her unused wall; a keyboard she'd managed to find in one of the old, dusty rooms in the bunker was pushed up against the wall next to the door along with a stack of illegally downloaded sheet music; a wooden desk with a giraffe painted on it that she and Sam had found at a flea market was shoved into the corner.

It was a simple room, a little quirky, a little rough around the edges, and altogether pretty adorable—similar to Sophie herself.

Sophie was sitting back in her pillows on her bed, tucked underneath the blankets, an open book in her hands. Dean glanced at the title. _Les Misérables_.

Her eyes met his as he walked in. He cleared his throat. "Still doing that reading race with Jack?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said, looking a little bit closed off. Dean couldn't blame her; he hadn't shown her a speck of warmth since coming back practically unannounced. "1,500 pages is more of a marathon than a sprint."

"Yeah, I don't think I've ever read 1,500 pages in my life," Dean joked halfheartedly.

Sophie sighed, closing her book and looking up at Dean with a conflicted look. "Dean…you didn't cut off that hunt early because of me, did you?"

Dean was surprised. He hadn't been expecting that. He walked up to her bed and, after a split-second decision, sat down next to her on it. "Why would you ask that?" he said, looking down at her.

She shook her head, looking ashamed, and Dean suddenly realized her distance hadn't been because of something he'd done; it was because of something she thought she'd done. "I know I sounded too whiny on the phone with you guys, and I didn't mean to guilt you into coming back here. I'd never want you to stop saving people because of me."

Dean shook his head, feeling bad that she'd been blaming herself this whole time. "No, Soph…."

She cut him off, still rambling. "I know that the hunt is the priority, and I'm really sorry if you felt like you had to come back because of me."

Dean was still shaking his head, and he wrapped his arm around her shoulder, feeling a relief when she reflexively curled against him, resting her head against his chest. He was almost surprised at how normal it felt, having her leaning against him, his arm holding her to him. "First of all, we didn't come back because of anything you said, and I'm guessing you have never sounded unintentionally whiny a day in your life."

"Are you saying I can sound whiny when I want to?" Sophie asked, her voice muffled by his jacket, clearly already happy that he wasn't upset with her.

"You know I'm saying that," Dean responded, a grin twitching at his lips. "But what's more important is that you understand something. You will always be not just a higher priority than whatever hunt we're on, but the _first _priority. Always. You got that?"

"Dean," Sophie started in protest.

"No," he said sternly. "I don't care what we're up against, but you will always be the first thing I care about. My first priority. No questions, no exceptions. I need you to know that."

He meant every word more than she would ever know, and he couldn't explain it, but he needed her to believe him.

She didn't reply. Instead, she just burrowed herself deeper into Dean's side, and he wrapped both of his arms around her and pulled her closer to him. He placed his chin on top of her head, holding her, moving only to gently kiss her temple. She settled into him and he let her, and it felt like the most natural, comfortable thing in the world to have her head resting just above his heart.

She fell straight to sleep just a few minutes later, and feeling peaceful for the first time since he and Sam had begun their hunt in Raleigh, Dean followed suit not far behind her.

**It's so so fun to write the more emotional moments between Dean and Sophie. Looking forward to more. Beware: much father-daughter fluff is in the future.**

**Quick note—I've gotten a few reviews likening the current Beelzebub plot with the plot of something called Black Butler. I can promise you that I definitely did not steal anything from it, because I have never even heard of it before. I based the mythology of Beelzebub off of the writings of Sebastian Michaelis, an actual person who did lots of research in demonology, so it's definitely within the realm of reason that someone else based their concept on the same foundation. That being said, I feel like my story will certainly be its own thing, and the similarities can't possibly last for much longer.**

**Thanks for reading! May the luck of the Irish be with you! ~ Lacey ;)**


	34. Chapter 34: Happy Birthday, Sophie

_Chapter 34: Happy Birthday, Sophie_

"Dean, oh my God! I'm turning sixteen, I'm not a baby!"

"How many times do I have to tell you? The answer is no!"

"Dean, stop being such an—"

"You better watch the next word that comes out of your mouth, sweetheart, because if it rhymes with _bass pole_ we're going to have problems!"

It was May first, the day before Sophie's birthday, which also happened to be Sam's birthday. And after much consideration, she had decided what she wanted.

"Dean, it's not even a dumb tattoo!" Sophie exclaimed. "You and Sam have it. Every hunter in the world has it."

Dean glared at her from across the table. "How many times do I have to tell you, _you are not a hunter_!"

"C'mon, Dean," Sophie pleaded. "I'm just asking for a little tiny shoulder blade tattoo. I could be asking for a tramp stamp or a giant blow up of Harry Styles' face or a cheesy motivational quote in cursive handwriting, but I'm not! In fact, I'd argue that what I'm asking for is totally practical."

"Oh, well when you put it that way, sure, why not," Dean said, looking thoughtful.

"Really?" Sophie replied, shocked.

"Of course not!" Dean replied, looking back at her. "No tattoo. End of discussion."

Sophie huffed.

"And by the way, being sixteen still makes you a baby to me, got it?"

She scooted her chair closer to the table, leaning forward and letting her lower lip protrude. "But Dean. It's my birthday."

Dean shook his head and lifted his hands up in a _quit __that _gesture. "Nope. No puppy eyes. Not dealing with it."

Sam walked into the room, a large mug of coffee in his hands. "For my birthday, I want both of you to just shut up already," he grumbled.

Sophie turned to look at Sam. "C'mon, Sam, tell Dean I should be able to get a tattoo."

"I'm staying out of this," Sam immediately said as he shook his head, sitting down and taking a long gulp of coffee.

"Sam, please," Sophie continued, using the same lower lip technique that she'd tried with Dean. "It's not even because I like tattoos. It's for my own protection."

Sam seemed to consider what she said, and then he looked over at Dean and opened his mouth.

Dean immediately cut him off. "No. Don't let her eyes get to you, Sammy. We can get her an anti-possession necklace or something. But she's not getting tatted up."

Sam looked over at Sophie and shrugged. "I tried."

She glared at Dean. "I don't understand what your big problem is with this," she complained. "You've taught me to shoot things in the face, you let me drink whiskey while you guys _hand stitched _my shoulder, you got me a new identity that says I'm sixteen so that I can drive to school, and I stay home alone for weeks on end on a regular basis. Basically, you've never cared about letting me do things that weren't legal or normal for a fifteen-year-old before this. Why does me getting a tiny tattoo where no one would ever see it bother you so much?"

Dean sat back in his chair. "I don't know. Because little girls shouldn't have tattoos, that's why."

He immediately knew he'd said the wrong thing when she stood up from the table and crossed her arms. "I'm almost sixteen, Dean! I am not some dumb little girl in pigtails that rides her tricycle to go play dollies with Tiffany down the street!"

"You sometimes wear pigtails," Dean pointed out.

Sophie made an exasperated sound, turned swiftly on her heel, and practically stomped her way out of the room.

Dean just shook his head. "The _one _time I pull the parenting card and she's acting like I didn't let her go to the prom or something."

Sam cleared his throat. "I don't know, Dean, she's not asking for anything you wouldn't have at her age."

Dean glared at his brother. "We didn't get those tattoos until a few years ago. When we were that little we'd never even seen a demon."

"So? If we had, and there was an imminent threat, I'm pretty sure Dad wouldn't have thought twice about letting us get those tattoos," Sam reasoned.

"Yeah, well there are no imminent threats for Sophie," Dean said.

Sam just gave him a long look. And Dean knew exactly what he wasn't saying. Of course there was an imminent threat. Beelzebub. But Sophie didn't need to know that. "Dean, I know we haven't talked a lot about this, but—"

"Sam, no," Dean said. "Not now. Look, Sophie can wear an anti-possession bracelet and then the problem will be solved."

Sam let out a short laugh. "Dean, she's lost a pair of shoes and a jacket in the last _week. _That bracelet wouldn't make it much longer."

Dean narrowed his eyes. "Look, she's not getting a tattoo. End of discussion."

Sam leaned forward, shaking his head. "Dean, what's the _real_ issue here? And don't say it's because little girls shouldn't have tattoos."

Dean just stared at his hands for a minute, collecting his thoughts. Then he looked up. "She doesn't need a tattoo because I'm never letting anything near her, or letting her near anything."

Sam looked at his brother, a serious look on his face. "I know," he said, to Dean's mild surprise, "and believe me, I'm not letting anything get to her without one hell of a fight either. But the tattoo is a good precaution. Because Dean, we're not perfect, and we might not be able to keep her away from _all _danger. I mean, look at us. How many times have we died despite doing everything we can to keep it from happening?"

"She's different," Dean tried.

Sam sighed. "If you want my advice—"

"I don't."

"—let her get the tattoo. Or she'll just go get it herself eventually. Probably illegally. By some creepy guy in a back alley who will screw it up."

Dean shook his head in exasperation. "Normal sixteen-year-olds are supposed to want dumb crap for their birthdays like concert tickets or the newest iPhone or a car."

Sam grinned. "Yeah, well, Sophie isn't exactly normal. And she already has a car. She's spoiled like that."

Dean exhaled loudly, and Sam knew he'd given in. "Fine. She can get the tattoo."

"YES!" came a loud cheer from down the hall, and then suddenly Sophie appeared, fist flying victoriously in the air. "Oh my gosh, this is so cool. All three of us are going to have matching tattoos. We're such an edgy family."

Dean stood up. "It's not going to be any bigger than a quarter, _capiche_?"

Sophie nodded, beaming. "No problem."

He wanted to roll his eyes at the excitement on her face. "And Sam and I are both coming with you."

"Fine by me," she said, still grinning. She practically skipped up to Dean and gave him a quick hug, which surprised him so much he forgot to return it. After she let go of him, unbothered by his lack of reciprocation, she looked up from under her lashes and offered him a mischievous grin.

"Do you think it comes in hot pink?"

* * *

Twenty-four hours and seventy-five dollars later, Sophie was sporting a small, standard black anti-possession tattoo on her right shoulder blade.

It had hurt, obviously, and Dean hadn't been crazy about the fact that she'd had to lay down with half her shirt off in front of a large man with a million different tattoos, and she was going to have to treat the tattoo to make sure everything healed nicely. But she was happy she'd gotten it, and she already felt a certain degree of peace knowing that now nothing could ever possess her and take away her control over herself.

When they got back to the bunker, Dean was in a slightly better mood because Sophie had let him drive the whole way back from the tattoo parlor without interrupting his Zeppelin jam with her pop music. They walked in, all arguing about the actual meaning of "Stairway to Heaven," when Sophie's eyes suddenly widened.

"Oh!" she exclaimed while Dean was mid-heated argument. "I almost forgot!"

She quickly turned and made her way to her room, leaving Sam and Dean in quiet for a few moments before she returned, a large pan in her hand and a smile on her face. She set it down on the table, took off the top, and revealed a large chocolate birthday cake. On it, written in terrible icing handwriting, it said _Happy Birthday Sam! (And Me!)_.

Sam looked at Sophie, looking surprised and touched. "Soph, you didn't have to make me a cake."

She looked a little bashful. "I mean, it's for me too, so don't get too full of yourself."

Sam grinned, and he walked over to her and pulled her into a warm hug that should've been awkward because Sam towered over Sophie, but wasn't. "It's great, Sophie, thanks."

She grinned. "You're welcome. I'm not exactly the best cook, so it could taste really gross, but I mean I followed all of the instructions on the back and I don't think I burned it so it should be—"

"It's great," Sam repeated, cutting her off and giving her one last squeeze before letting her go. "I should get a knife from the kitchen so we can dig in."

He disappeared into the kitchen and Sophie turned to see Dean offering her a small grin. "That was nice of you do to," he remarked.

Sophie shrugged. "I had to do something for him. And who doesn't love cake?"

"How come I didn't get a cake on my birthday?" Dean asked, smothering his question in fake hurt.

"Because I didn't know it was your birthday then," Sophie reasoned. "And when I learned that it was I drove all the way to that diner in the town over and bought you pie, so I don't want to hear your sass."

He tried to look as offended as possible, causing Sophie to just laugh. A second later Sam walked through the door with a knife, some forks, and some plates in his hands, and soon they were digging into the cake, talking and joking and making fun of each other.

"What's going on here?"

Sam, Dean, and Sophie all jerked their heads up at the voice. All three were already on their second slice of cake. Upon seeing who had spoken, Sophie smiled widely. "Cas!" she exclaimed. "It's a birthday party! Do you want some cake?"

Cas looked perplexed, standing in front of them in his usual trenchcoat and loose tie getup. "I didn't realize Winchesters were accustomed to celebrating the day of their births. I mean, I was aware of the general human tendency to do so, but not the Winches—"

Sophie rolled her eyes and handed Cas a piece of cake that she'd slid onto a plate. "Yeah, well, they do now. I'm officially sixteen years old, Cas, and Sam is just old, so here you go. Eat up."

Sam and Dean looked on with grins as Cas took the cake, looking slightly overwhelmed. "You know I don't—"

"—need to eat, I know, I know," Sophie finished for him. "But I also know for a fact you _can _eat, because you're the reason we're always running out of popcorn. Cake is to birthdays as popcorn is to movies, Cas, so just be a little bit human for today, okay? I promise it's actually pretty tasty."

Silently, Cas accepted the cake, and after a moment of Sophie watching him expectantly, he took a bite. He chewed it a few times, and then he nodded thoughtfully. "This is very good," he said, his mouth still full of cake.

Sam, Dean, and Sophie all grinned.

* * *

As the night grew older, Sophie found herself getting more and more tired, and eventually, she had to call it quits. "Alright, guys," she sighed with a note of finality, stuffed with two pieces of cake and some of the pizza they'd spontaneously ordered. "I think I need to go to bed. I have school tomorrow."

Cas nodded, setting down his unfinished sixth piece of cake. "And I have some business back in Heaven that I need to attend to. Happy birthday, little lion. You too, Sam." He gave Dean a quick nod, and then with a rustling of wings he was gone.

Sophie shook her head. "The fact that I'm friends with an angel will never cease to amaze me."

"Join the club," Sam said with a laugh.

Sophie exhaled loudly. "Well, goodnight guys." She looked at Dean and gave him a grin. "Thanks for the tattoo."

Dean, whose mouth was stuffed with a bite from a fresh piece of cake, gave her a look. "No more ink," he managed to say.

"Deal," Sophie said, and then with a yawn she slowly dragged her feet across the floor as she made her way back to her room.

Sam and Dean watched her go, silent until they heard the door shut.

"Sixteen," Sam said.

"They grow up fast," Dean remarked sarcastically. Sam could hear the lingering resentment in his voice, the bitterness of not experiencing the first decade and a half of his daughter's life shining through.

Sam looked at his brother sadly. "It's probably best not to think about what you've missed and think about what you've got now instead," he offered.

Dean just sat in his chair, looking grouchy and grumbling to himself unhappily. Suddenly, he sat up straight in his chair. "Dammit," he snapped. He stood up and pulled something out of the pocket of his jacket. Sam, upon closer inspection, saw that it was a small square shaped gift wrapped in newspaper.

Sam couldn't help but grin. "You got her a gift."

Dean looked a little uncomfortable. "Yeah. It's sort of crappy, but it's better than nothing."

"How come I don't get a gift?" Sam asked.

"Because you're not an adorable sixteen-year-old girl," Dean pointed out. "And coming up with a gift for her took up all of my mental energy."

Sam nodded. "Fair enough," he said. He watched Dean for a moment. "Well, what are you waiting for? Go give it to her."

"Oh. Yeah. Right," Dean said, and as if he'd been shocked, he quickly turned and walked out of the main room and down the hall to Sophie's bedroom.

Dean knocked on her door. "One second," she called. Dean waited, listening to the faint shuffling behind the door. A minute later, she opened the door. She was wearing her pink and yellow pajama pants and a T-shirt that said _Read Books, Not T-Shirts_, and she was in the middle of putting her hair into a braid. "Hey," she said, stifling a yawn. "What's up?"

"Can I come in?"

Sophie looked curious, but didn't say anything. She just nodded and pulled the door open wider, letting him walk through. He stood in the middle of her room, glancing around at her walls. "I still can't believe you managed to make a room as sad and empty as this one into something homey and girly."

Sophie grinned. "Thank you. I think."

Dean cleared his throat. "I got you a birthday gift."

Sophie nodded. "I know, Dean, the tattoo, I already thanked—"

"No, no, I mean…," he trailed, and then he reached into his pocket and pulled out the newspaper package.

Sophie looked surprised. "Oh. Dean, you didn't have to—"

Dean made a noise that sounded half annoyed and half amused. "Save the formalities and just…take it."

He pushed it towards her and she did as he said, smiling. "Do I get to open it in front of you?"

"Yeah, sure," Dean said under his breath, crossing his arms.

Sophie, thinking it was sort of funny how uncomfortable Dean was giving a present, slipped her finger under the tape and opened up the package. She tipped the package into her hand, and to her surprise two CD cases slid into her hand. When she glanced at the covers of each, Dean was unprepared for how touched Sophie looked.

"I know it's not a lot," he immediately said. "But I just thought, you know, maybe—"

"Dean," she said, smiling up at him. "It's great."

She looked down again at the two CDs. The first one was the newest Taylor Swift album, and she knew how much it must've pained him to purchase it. The second one had a homemade cover, and in Dean's haphazard handwriting it was labeled _Led Zeppelin for the Musically Challenged_.

He saw her looking at the second one and immediately started babbling. "It's Zeppelin even you would like," he explained quickly. "I put the greats on there. And it wasn't easy. I had to navigate this thing called iTunes and Google all of this crap about burning playlists onto discs and it was damn hard. But I think you'll like it. It's got 'Stairway to Heaven' and 'Ramble On' and 'Dazed and Confused' and about fifteen others that you can't possible not like. I just thought, you know, maybe you'd want—"

"Dean," she cut him off again. He stopped talking, and instead of saying anything she stepped forward and let her arms wrap around him, hoping the hug would convey her gratitude.

Perhaps to both of their surprise, Dean immediately returned the hug without his usual awkwardness and hesitance. He held her tightly for a moment, making sure to avoid touching the area where her still-healing tattoo was, before giving her a final squeeze and letting her go. "Well, Sam's probably needing me to go pretend I care that it's also his birthday," he finally said.

Sophie grinned. "Yeah, that'd be nice of you."

Dean nodded, looking down at her. "Happy Birthday, Sophie."

"Thanks," she replied softly.

He nodded again, this time more to himself, and then he turned and left.

Sophie grinned as the door shut, looking again at the gift in her hands. After a moment of deliberation, she took one of the CDs out of its case and inserted it into her laptop, which was open on her desk. She waited for the laptop music player to pop up, pressed play, and then turned off her lights and crawled into bed.

And the sound of Led Zeppelin playing softly from her laptop lulled her to a quick and deep sleep.

**Annnnd we're back to our regularly scheduled Saturday morning updates! Hope you liked this chapter. It's kind of a lighter one to make up for the darker stuff we've seen in the last couple and that we'll see in the next several. Thanks for all your reviews and support! ~ Lacey :)**


	35. Chapter 35: Jeans Are Hot

_Chapter 35: Jeans Are Hot_

It was the last week of school.

Sophie was shocked at how quickly half the year had gone. One day she was quietly going to her prep school in North Carolina, living in a state of depression and loneliness with Steve, and the next she was living with Sam and Dean and going to a school where she had friends and a niche. It was astounding to her.

And in just a week, it'd be over.

At lunch that Wednesday, when Jack was taking a makeup Brit lit exam, Jamie couldn't believe Sophie was sad about school coming to a close. "Are you kidding me?" she exclaimed, her eyes wide with shock as she readjusted a bobby pin in her dark blonde hair. "I've been counting down the days until summer since Christmas."

"It's true," Harry chimed in as he punched a few numbers into the calculator in his hands. He generally multitasked during lunch, and was currently doing some of his calculus homework. "She's been crossing off days on her calendar religiously."

Sophie shrugged as she took a bite of a carrot. "I don't know, I guess I'll just miss coming here and seeing everyone every day of the week. This is the first school I've gone to that I've actually liked."

Harry grinned at her. "C'mon, Sophie, you know you'll see us so much over the summer you'll get sick of us."

Sophie looked at him in surprise. "Will I?"

"Well yeah," Jamie chimed in, looking at Sophie with her kind blue eyes. "I mean, we have to finish watching _Gossip Girl _together, don't we?"

Harry groaned. "I'm not watching another episode of that. You can't make me."

Jamie turned up her nose at him. "Well, you don't have to. I have Sophie for that now." Then she grinned at him. "But I know you're obsessed with Chuck and Blair, don't lie."

"I'm not obsessed," Harry grumbled, staring grouchily at his calculator. "I just think they complement each other, that's all."

Sophie and Jamie laughed. "See, Sophie? You have to come over to save me from dealing with Harry all day. Besides, I like having a girl friend to shop with me and give me honest opinions on my haircut and just talk with. It's nice."

Sophie grinned at Jamie. She was right—it definitely was nice to have a girl friend for a change. Sure, Sophie was closer with Jack than she was with Jamie, but they were still good friends. Sophie had never really had a lot of female friends; she'd never had a lot of patience for some of the pettier things in life that girls tended to dwell upon. But Jamie was different. Sure, she was girly and enjoyed brand name clothes and Frappuccinos at Starbucks, but she was also deep and intelligent and unwaveringly kind. Sophie felt lucky to call her a friend, and even luckier that Jamie called her a friend.

"Not to mention," Harry added in the middle of Sophie's train of thought, "I think Jack would kick the bucket if you two went a whole summer without talking."

Sophie looked at him sharply. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Harry just grinned. "I'm saying that you two are on the same wavelength. Like, it's almost creepy. I mean, you two finished _Les Mis_ on the exact same day. That's not normal."

"I guess," Sophie trailed.

"Sometimes you guys even _dress _similarly," Harry pointed out.

"Are you saying I dress like a boy or that Jack dresses like a girl?" Sophie asked with a slight grin.

"You'll never know."

"Oh, hey, by the way," Jamie piped up as she flipped through her planner. "What are you wearing to the Bash?"

"Bash?" Sophie asked disinterestedly, picking up her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. "What bash?"

Both Jamie and Harry stared at her, dumbstruck. "No one's told you about the Bash?" Harry asked incredulously.

"I don't think so….," Sophie said slowly.

"I can't believe nobody's told you about the Bash," Jamie said in disbelief. "It's only the single most important night of any Lebanon Central High School student's year."

"What is it?" Sophie asked hesitantly.

"It's this ridiculously huge party that happens the Saturday after the last day of school," Harry explained. "The location changes every year so that cops aren't staking out the place, and it goes all night. I mean, obviously none of us are really partiers, but—"

"But there are parties, and then there's the Bash," Jamie finished for him. "You've got to go."

"I don't know," Sophie said, shaking her head. "I'm not really a party person."

"Like I said, neither are we," Harry reasoned. "But the Bash is a once in a lifetime experience. This year it's at this abandoned ranch off the highway, and it's going to be insane."

"Besides, you're class president," Jamie said. "You have to be there."

Sophie grinned. "Pretty sure that wasn't in the job description."

"Pretty sure it was in the fine print," Jamie replied jokingly.

"Look, I don't know…," Sophie started.

"Even _Jack _is going, Sophie," Jamie implored. "Jack, who is an eighty-year-old man trapped in a teenager's body, will be going to the Bash. It's _that_ important."

"I mean…I guess I'll go," Sophie sighed. "I have no idea what I'll tell my dad, though."

"My advice?" Jamie offered. "Tell him the truth. Maybe he'll surprise you and let you go if you say you'll be safe. And then, if he flat out says no, just say you're coming over to my house to hang out with me and then we'll go from there."

Sophie nodded, feeling uncomfortable. "I don't really…lie to my dad," she said.

"Well, hopefully you won't have to," Jamie offered with a shrug. "But seriously, you can't miss this."

"Besides, a little rebellion is good for the soul," Harry pronounced. "Sophie, not to give you a big ego or anything, but you're, like, the perfect daughter. You're smart, you're pretty, everyone likes you. You've probably never done a bad thing in your life. One night of going off the beaten path isn't going to ruin you."

Sophie nodded, feeling herself become more and more convinced. "You're right. I guess I can be a normal high school student for once. Maybe it'll even be fun."

Jamie beamed. "That's the spirit!" she exclaimed. "Now, back to the original question. What are you wearing?"

"Um," Sophie began, her mind going blank. "Jeans?"

Jamie shook her head quickly. "No, no, you need something hot to wear. Do you have anything hot to wear?"

Sophie put on her most offended look. "Jeans are hot."

"No, no," Jamie tutted. "You'll need to come over. Today maybe?"

"Yeah, sure," Sophie sighed submissively. "But you can't put me in anything ridiculous."

"Deal," Jamie said, beaming.

At that moment, Jack slid into the seat next to Sophie unannounced, causing her to nearly jump out of her skin, which only made him snort in amusement. "Watch it, jumpy. So guess who just aced his Brit lit exam?"

"I'm guessing you?" Jamie offered with a smile.

"How'd you know?" Jack exclaimed, returning the smile. "So, what'd I miss? Embarrassing moments, salacious gossip?"

"We told Sophie about the Bash," Harry said.

"Ah, yes, the infamous Bash," Jack said, looking at Sophie with a mischievous glint in his eye. "I take it you've been peer pressured into going."

She exhaled sadly. "Yeah."

He grinned in amusement. "Don't feel too bad, S, it happens to the best of us. Besides, the Bash is a rite of passage. You can't be a student here and not go."

"Not you, too," Sophie whined. "I thought you of all people would avoid drinking the Koolaid."

He shrugged apologetically. "What can I say, it's actually a lot of fun. I mean, it's a lot of alcohol-induced fun, but fun nonetheless."

"Are you trying to persuade me into going or talk me out of it?" Sophie asked.

Before he could answer, the bell rang, and with a wink Jack stood up and whisked his untouched tray away, leaving Sophie grumbling behind him.

* * *

On Saturday morning, the day of the Bash, Sophie stood and faced the mirror in her room, trying to put her most adult look on her face.

"Dean," she said to herself in the mirror, "tonight I'm going to a party." She replayed the line in her head. "No, too assertive and demanding." She straightened up, tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear, and tried again. "Dean, I know your first instinct is to say no, but there's a party tonight that I'd really like to go to, if you'd let me." She shook her head. "No, too childish and placating." She took a deep breath and restarted. "Dean—"

There was a knock on her door and she jumped, turning just as Dean walked into her room. "Hey, you up, kiddo?"

"Yeah," Sophie said quickly, hoping she wasn't blushing. "What's up?"

"Sam and I have a case. Or, well, a lead on an old unresolved case."

At that, Sophie straightened up in attention. "The Raleigh case?"

Dean looked a little uncomfortable. "Yeah. And we're actually going to steal Cas for some extra manpower, so I don't think he'll be dropping in tonight."

At that, Sophie felt the all too familiar ball of panic slowly begin to knot itself in her stomach. "If you need Cas it must be pretty dangerous."

Dean looked at her, and she saw a hint of sadness in his eyes that catalyzed the growth of the panic in her gut. "It always is, kiddo. But yeah, maybe a little more so than usual today. Don't worry, though. We come back. We always come back. We're really just bringing Cas along as an extra precaution."

Sophie nodded, biting her lip like she always seemed to do when she was nervous. Suddenly, she knew she wasn't going to tell Dean about the party. Clearly, he had enough on his plate already, and the last thing he needed was to argue with his teenage daughter about a party she probably wasn't even going to stay at for very long.

Dean mistook her deliberation for anxiety. "Hey," he said, taking a step closer to her and lifting her chin with one finger. "Head up," he commanded softly, looking into her eyes. "We'll be fine."

Sophie nodded and let out a shaky breath. "Yeah. Okay. You'll be fine."

Dean gently squeezed her shoulder. "We're heading out in about ten minutes, if you want to tell Sam bye."

She nodded and watched as he walked out the door. When the door closed, she looked back at herself in the mirror.

"Well," she sighed, staring into her own green eyes that eerily made it seem like she was staring into Dean's, "I guess I'm officially a rebellious teenager, now."

* * *

Later that night she was in Jamie's room, turning around in front of another mirror.

"I can't believe I agreed to this," Sophie groaned. "I look like I should be walking the streets."

"Hey," Jamie chastised. "No self-degradation. Besides, you look smoking. You could walk into a bar and no one would dare card you."

"And my dad thought there was no way I could ever pass for twenty-one," Sophie mumbled under her breath, looking at herself up and down in the mirror.

Maybe she didn't look twenty-one, but she definitely didn't look sixteen. Everything she wore was from Jamie, because Sophie didn't have a single dress, skirt, or pair of heels to her name. She was wearing a black bandage skirt and some tall black heels, which made her legs look about ten miles longer than they actually were. She also wore a cream colored tank top with skinny straps and a cutout in the back that showed off her tattoo and how tiny her waist was. Jamie, Harry, and Jack all knew about the tattoo, which Sophie had explained away as having "family significance," and they thought it was cool, but Sophie still felt a little bit weird about showing it off. Jamie, however, insisted it looked really hot, and Sophie wasn't really in the mood to fight her on it.

Perhaps it wasn't the outfit that made her feel older, though; perhaps it was the hair and makeup. Sophie had sat uncomfortably as Jamie took a curling iron to her hair and a various assortment of cosmetics to her face. Sophie was no stranger to a bit of concealer and mascara, but the amount of product being applied to her face was a bit overwhelming to her. But the end product was pretty astounding, at least to Sophie. Her eyes were shimmering under a bit of light gold eyeshadow, the intensity of her green eyes was deepened and darkened by eyeliner and mascara, and her lips seemed fuller under a shiny pink gloss. Although her hair had a natural soft curl to it, Jamie had curled it to not-too-perfect perfection and pulled it into a chic high ponytail.

Sophie felt strange. She felt uncomfortably noticeable, like a fish out of water. But she also felt beautiful, and the conflicting feelings made her a little nauseous.

"I don't know, Jamie," Sophie suddenly said. "This is so not…me."

"I know," Jamie said as she slipped into her outfit, a tight blue dress that matched the dark hue of her eyes and had an even deeper cutout in the back than Sophie's top. "But the Bash is our one night to be someone we're not, or someone we've always wanted to be, guilt free."

"I guess," Sophie said, not convinced.

Jamie gave her a little grin, her eyes sparkling. "Trust me, Sophie, it'll be fun. Or at the very least it'll be a night you'll remember forever."

"That's encouraging," Sophie grumbled.

Jamie laughed, retouching her lipstick and making sure her hair was pinned the way she liked it. "Okay, Oscar the Grouch, the boys are waiting for us. You ready?"

Sophie twisted the gold bracelet Jamie had let her borrow around her wrist. "Ready as I'll ever be."

Jamie grabbed her hand and practically dragged her out of her room. As they made their way to the staircase, heels clicking on the hardwood floors, they could hear Harry and Jack's voices floating up from the foyer downstairs. "Tonight's not a good night," Jack was saying. "At the Bash? No way."

"Well, if you're serious, you should tell her soon," Harry replied. "She won't wait around forever."

Before they could say anything else, and before Sophie could try to decipher what they'd been talking about, Jamie and Sophie were descending down the staircase and Harry and Jack were looking up at them. Sophie blushed as Jack zeroed in on her, looking speechless for the first time since they'd met. She glanced at Harry, and grinned when she saw he had eyes only for Jamie. They were really the cutest couple, Sophie thought. And then when she looked back at Jack, who looked at her with that same stunned expression, she wondered if maybe one day _they _could be a cute couple, if they—

She was pulled out of her thoughts as they made it to the bottom of the stairs and Jack gave her a grin. "Even in those heels you're still a shorty," he remarked smoothly, his dark blue eyes shining.

Sophie frowned. "Watch it, bucko. Stilettos double as weapons, and I've got a mean roundhouse kick."

Jack laughed. "I don't doubt that," he said. "Now c'mon, we've got to get out of here before Mom and Dad get home. Which should be in like twenty minutes, so let's get going."

Without further ado, the four of them hurried out of the house, loaded up into Jack's Honda Civic, and made their way to the Bash.

**Oh my goodness, in your reviews you guys are really gung-ho on figuring out when Sophie addresses the whole "calling Dean 'Dad'" and "calling Sam 'Uncle Sam'" thing. To try and satiate your desire to know, I will tell you that will be addressed—possibly not resolved completely, but addressed—within three or four chapters.**

**As always, thanks for reading and for reviewing! Look for an update next Saturday! ~ Lacey :)**


	36. Chapter 36: The Bash

**Surprise! Because I will be out of town Saturday and Sunday with no access to a laptop...this week you're getting a Friday update! **

**Little note...there's some definitely TV-14 intensity coming up in this chapter. Just a heads up.**

_Chapter 36: The Bash_

Sophie could hear the Bash before she could see it.

The volume of cars had been so ridiculous that they'd had to park nearly half a mile away from the abandoned ranch, and on the walk to the location they could hear the music thumping loudly and the sound of hundreds of people talking and screaming and laughing and partying. Jamie and Sophie kept nearly twisting their ankles walking over the rocky path in heels, constantly falling on each other or one of the guys in an effort to stay upright. They were already laughing and in a fairly light mood by the time they made it to the ranch.

Sophie had to admit they'd been right. This was clearly the event of the year. It looked like every person from Lebanon High was there, and possibly some students from surrounding schools as well. There were bright lights and thudding music and a stream of people still entering the building.

Sophie looked up at Jack. "You Kansans sure know how to throw a party."

He grinned. "That we do. Just follow your basic party rules—keep an eye on your drink, stick with me, don't trust strange guys asking you to follow them to dark rooms—and you'll be fine."

Sophie laughed. "I know the drill, Jack. Just because I don't go to parties doesn't mean I've never paid attention any of the hundred times people come to school to talk to us about safety and alcohol and stuff."

"You're probably one of the few that actually does," he laughed back.

They made it to the entryway, where two boys that Sophie recognized as graduated seniors were taking count of how many people were entering the house and drawing black X's on the hands of everyone who came and paid the mandatory five dollars that went into the alcohol slush fund. Sophie found it comical that here, X's meant you could drink, whereas generally speaking X's on the back of your hand meant you weren't granted access to the bar.

"Welcome to the Bash, all! I'm Tyler, the slick son of a bitch who orchestrated this fine evening," the first guy said, and Sophie could have rolled her eyes. Clearly, he and his buddies were already wasted. "Twenty bucks for the four of you!"

Jack pulled a twenty out of his pocket and handed it to him. "That's for the three of them. But I'm not drinking tonight."

Tyler grinned. "Good man, good man," he practically sung. "Ryan, if you would be so kind as to mark these three lovely heathens, and give the good man five dollars in change!"

Sophie turned to look at Ryan and realized that she recognized him. He had been the student body president, and he'd presided over all of the meetings Sophie had attended as sophomore class president and organized and ran a lot of school activities. He was smart and a crazy good baseball player, headed off to Duke in the fall on both academic and athletic scholarships, and he was known as being a bit of a dick. He too had the look in his eye that said that maybe he might have had one too many, but he didn't look quite as jovial as Tyler.

He marked the hand of Harry that wasn't slung protectively across Jamie's shoulders, the right hand of Jamie, and he pressed a five dollar bill into Jack's X-less hand. When he got to Sophie, he offered her a grin that Sophie could only describe as sloppy. "I know you," Ryan said, running his hand through his dark hair in an obvious attempt to be seductive. "You're Sophie, on student government. And I think you're also the one my man Mason is always bitching about."

Sophie nodded warily. "That's me."

"I've gotta say," Ryan continued, "you are a hell of a lot sexier up close and wearing that skirt than you are with your nose in a book. You sophomores have me thinking all kinds of dirty thoughts."

Jack was bristling beside her. She just glared at Ryan. "I'll tell you what. You mark my hand, and I'll let you watch me walk away."

Ryan smirked, roughly grabbing her wrist and slowly drawing the X on her hand. When he was done, he didn't let go of her wrist. "Save a dance for me?"

"We'll see," Sophie said, annoyed and willing to say whatever it took to get him off her.

He seemed satisfied enough and dropped her wrist. "Later, Sophie."

She didn't reply, just walked off with Jack. Harry and Jamie, seeing that Jack seemed to be willing to make sure Sophie was okay, had already melted into the party, and so he was waiting for her. "Of course after things were finally glossing themselves over with Mason you'd go catching the attention of Ryan Scott." His voice was raised, not in anger, but because it was necessary to do so for her to hear him over the noise of the party.

"He's going to Duke next year, right?" Sophie asked, practically yelling back.

"Yeah," Jack said, looking over Sophie's shoulder and glaring in Ryan's direction. "He's also a first class douchebag who can get away with whatever because his dad owns a company that sells videogames."

"Sounds like a first rate guy," Sophie said. "But he's too drunk to even remember he talked to me. So c'mon, let's enjoy this Bash."

Jack nodded. "You're right." Suddenly, he turned to give Sophie a playful grin. "How does goody-two-shoes Sophie Winchester feel about a drink?"

Sophie frowned. "I am _not _a goody-two-shoes."

"You wrote the librarian an apology note for turning in your library book a day late," Jack pointed out.

She sighed. "Okay, maybe a little. But not enough to say no to a drink."

Jack grinned. "Excellent. I've always wondered what you'd be like drunk."

"I'm not getting drunk," Sophie asserted.

Jack put his hands up defensively. "Hey, I support that. I'm designated driver, so I could use someone to enjoy sobriety with. But tonight's your night to have some fun, so you be as crazy or as grandma-like as you want to be."

Sophie grinned and hit his shoulder. "Let's just go get a drink already."

"Your wish is my command."

They pushed through the throng of kids drinking, dancing, and making out until they hit a bar setup, where more seniors were checking for the X's on hands and serving out drinks.

A senior named Ron that Sophie recognized from her calc class offered her a friendly grin. "Hey, Sophie, Jack!" he greeted amicably. "Good to see you two!"

"You too, Ron," she said with a grin.

"What'll it be?" he asked, gesturing to the ridiculous stockpile of alcohol behind him. This wasn't your average red solo cup affair. There was every type of alcohol Sophie knew the name of, and then some. It wasn't like Sophie had never had alcohol—after all, she'd practically downed a good portion of Dean's whiskey the night they'd first met and she'd needed something to dull the pain of her injuries—but she still wasn't very familiar with different drinks and what was acceptable to drink at a party and what wasn't.

Ron, sensing she needed a nudge in some direction, continued, "If you're not sure, there's always the famous Bash Blend.

"Bash blend?" Sophie asked, baffled.

"Basically, it's the most epic jungle juice you could ever have."

She was still looking a little overwhelmed when Jack said, "Let's play it safe and go for a rum and Coke. I'm not sure you're ready for the Bash Blend."

Sophie gave a little laugh. "You're probably right. Rum and Coke it is."

Ron happily made her the drink and handed it over to her. "Thanks," she said, taking it in her hand.

Ron turned to Jack. "And for you?"

"Rum and Coke, hold the rum," Jack said. Ron gave him a look. "I'm designated driver," he explained.

Ron grinned and poured some Coke into a cup for Jack before handing it over. "Me too, my friend. Here's to actually being able to remember a Bash!"

"Amen," Jack replied with a grin, looking down at Sophie with one of his signature grins, the ones that lately had been making her heart palpitate at an irregular rhythm.

In an effort to calm herself, she took a sip of her drink as they walked further into the party. She swallowed it and looked up in surprise. "Wow," she said. "Definitely more rum than Coke in this."

Jack grinned. "We could go back and ask Ron to add some more Coke if you want."

"No, no it's fine," she said, taking another sip. She felt emboldened all of a sudden, wearing sky high heels and holding a drink in her hand. "You dance, Williams?"

Jack looked at her in surprise. "Um…no not really."

"Perfect. Neither do I," she said with a grin, grabbing his hand. "C'mon."

She dragged him out towards the barn, where the music was loudest and people were dancing. Jack was laughing, his eyes alit with amusement at Sophie's momentary spontaneity. He followed her to the middle of the dance floor, where it was hot and dark and vibrating with music, and they danced.

One refill and an hour later they were still dancing. Sophie was a terrible dancer, and she was worse with every drink that she took, but she was having a blast and Jack was completely entertained and somewhat entranced by her. She was straddling the line between buzzed and tipsy, not even close to drunk but definitely not sober. She was carefree and in control, looser than usual and yet still herself. And Jack was mesmerized.

They were bobbing along to a remixed version of a popular country song when Sophie felt someone brush up behind her. "I told you to save me a dance. I'm here to collect."

Her first reaction was to just ignore him, thinking that if he got the idea that she wasn't interested, he'd go away. But then his hands snuck low on her waist and she felt his body press against hers, and then there were lips on her ear. "I think your tattoo is really sexy."

She rolled her eyes, resisting the urge to turn around and snap his neck, which, thanks to Dean's training, she actually knew how to do. Instead, she quickly turned to see Ryan, the douchebag that had put the X on her hand, and she held herself back from rolling her eyes again. "Sorry, buddy, I don't want to dance with you."

Jack immediately stepped up next to her, slinging an arm over her shoulders. "She's with me," he said, eyes narrowed.

Ryan grinned. His eyes were red and slightly out of focus. If he'd been drunk before, he was beyond wasted now. "She's only with you if she says she is."

"I am," Sophie responded without missing a beat, leaning into Jack. "And we're leaving now."

She turned, Jack guiding her with a hand at the small of her back, but before she could get far she felt a hand curl around the wrist holding her drink and yank her backwards, and she lost her balanced and stumbled into Ryan's chest, her drink hand trapped between his body and hers, spilling a bit of the contents onto his shirt. He was so drunk he didn't even seem to notice. "You sure about that?" he asked her in a slurred, low voice. "I'm pretty confident I can show you a good time."

"Hey!" Jack exclaimed angrily, about to jump to her defense. But Sophie was quicker.

Her reflex was immediate. With the hand not wrapped around her drink she grabbed his shoulder, and then she pulled him towards her and jerked her knee up to hit him where it hurts, and he immediately let go of her as a whoosh of breath left his body. "And I'm pretty confident I can make sure you never reproduce," she snapped coolly. "Bye, Ryan."

Jack quickly led her off the dance floor and back inside the ranch house. "You okay?" he asked.

"Peachy," she said. "I've never actually gotten to knee a guy like that before. It was sort of invigorating."

Jack laughed. "Yeah, well, I'm just sort of sad he ruined your time dancing. You looked like you were having fun."

Sophie sighed, taking another drink. "Well, all good things must end."

They found their way to a section of wall no one was leaning up against and stood there for a while, just talking. Sophie had come to realize that talking with Jack was one of her favorite things to do. Whether it was about something as mundane as washing their cars or as deep and thrilling as one of their favorite novels, their conversations were always so connected.

Leaning up against the wall, they talked about college and what they wanted to do with their lives. Jack, of course, wanted to study literature and then go on to get his PhD in the hopes of being a world renowned professor, and he talked about all of the different programs he'd been researching. Sophie was drawn to the light that emerged in his eye when he talked about his future. It was so obvious that he knew that high school wasn't it for him. She was jealous of that, if she was honest with herself. She wasn't sure what her future held.

But still, amidst the clamor of drunk high schoolers and loud music, she shared with him her desire to be an attorney, the kind that helped change the world. She told him about a law firm she'd heard about that helped non-profit humanitarian organizations serving people in Africa, and that she was interested in working somewhere like that after she graduated from law school and passed the Bar. He had this grin on his face as she talked, the kind that seemed to radiate light everywhere, and she stopped-mid sentence. "What?"

He shook his head. "Nothing," he said. "It's just…you've got to be the only girl who wants to stand here and talk about futures and hopes and dreams while we're at the biggest party of the year."

Sophie grinned. "And you've got to be the only boy who wants to do that, too."

"Maybe so."

Maybe it was the alcohol, but Sophie couldn't help but let her mind wander a bit to the thought of her and Jack being more than friends, of him somehow being a part of her future. He just looked so good with his strong jaw and blue eyes and effortless smile and constant focus on her. As they had been talking, she found she was starting to become a little overwhelmed with how good he looked. She felt a little lightheaded, almost dizzy—

But then her world slowly began to take on a blurry sheen, and she suddenly realized it wasn't just her attraction towards Jack. She looked at her drink suspiciously. There was no way two small cups of rum and Coke were making her feel this way. Especially since she hadn't taken a sip of her second drink in twenty or thirty minutes, since she and Jack had gotten deep into their conversation. There was no way.

She was about to say something to Jack about it when he glanced at his phone and groaned. He looked up at Sophie, his eyes annoyed and apologetic. "Harry just texted saying that Jamie's throwing up out back and keeps asking for me. I need to go make sure she's okay. You good to hang out here for a moment?"

Sophie nodded, trying to push back the spinning in her head. She was fine; she was overreacting. "Yeah, of course. Go."

Jack slipped away and Sophie leaned against the wall, staring into her cup. Two drinks. Was that enough to make her feel this way? No, there was no way. And her drink had been in her hand the whole time, there had never been an opportunity for anyone to slip anything in it—

She froze in realization. There had been a moment when she hadn't been paying attention to her drink; when Ryan had pulled her to him on the dance floor, bringing her drink hand within spiking distance.

She cursed under her breath, her heartbeat steadily increasing in nervousness. The room was turning around her, and she suddenly knew if she didn't find somewhere to lay down she was going to collapse in front of everyone.

She needed to find Jack.

She stumbled in the direction Jack had gone to search for Harry and Jamie, suddenly feeling like the party was much bigger and louder than it had been before. The people and lights around her swirled into one bright, pulsating blur, and she could barely tell up from down. She felt a cold terror creep into her veins, and a certainty that she needed to remove herself from the party.

It felt like she'd been walking for miles when she found herself in an empty hallway, save for a couple passionately making out against the wall, and she leaned against the opposite wall, closing her eyes in an effort to stop the spinning. She was terrified, and she didn't know what to do.

Her hands shaking, she pulled out her phone from where she'd tucked it into the waistband of her skirt. She flipped through clumsily until she found Jack's number and dialed it.

Nothing happened.

She tried again, and a little bubble popped up onto her screen, and after a moment of trying to focus her eyes on it, she realized it was informing her that she was in a no service zone. She groaned, trying to hold back her tears, looking up and watching just as the entwined couple across the hall disappeared into one of the spare rooms. She made her way deeper down the hallway, hoping that if there wasn't better service, there would at least be an exit. When she got to the end, however, there was no door leading outside, just a few leading to more spare rooms.

Sophie pulled out her phone again, dialing Jack's number. To her relief, her phone had a single bar of service, and she held the phone to her ear as it rang.

"_Hi, this is Jack, sorry I missed your call. I'm probably reading a book, so leave a message and I'll get back with you when I'm done or when it gets boring!"_

Sophie choked back her sob and leaned against the wall, her chest heaving as she gasped in and out in despair. She thought about making her way back to the party, but she could barely stay on her feet at this point, much less navigate her way back to the party.

She wanted Dean.

The thought was a flash of raw emotion in her mind. She wanted Dean to come and make sure she was okay and take her home and tell her she had been an idiot and make her never do something like this again. She wanted him to put the fear of God into Ryan so that he'd never do this to any other girl.

She just wanted her dad.

She was on her way to attempting to dial his number when she heard a voice that sent a bolt of panic through her spine. "Where're you headed, beautiful?"

Sophie lifted her head to look at Ryan. Was he really that close to her face, or was it just an effect of whatever he'd given her? "Bastard," she spat at him, but even she could tell her voice was weak, coming out more as a hoarse whisper.

She felt an arm curl around her waist, and she had little control of her body as he pulled her close to him. His mouth neared her ear, and her nose wrinkled as she caught a whiff of all the alcohol on his breath. "I know you don't mean that, sweetheart. All I did was give you a little powdered courage. Now we can do what I know you've been thinking about all night."

All she could do was groan as he pulled her aside, holding onto her tightly as he opened the door to one of the spare rooms, banging her hip carelessly against the doorframe of the entryway as he pushed her through the door.

She knew she was in trouble, but she felt trapped inside of her own failing body. Instinctually, she did the only thing she could in her physically incapacitated state.

_Cas_, she prayed desperately. _Cas, please help me_.

There was no immediate answer, and Sophie felt tears begin to spill out of her eyes as Ryan casually dumped her onto one of two twin beds inside of the room. She couldn't see properly, and everything was dark and shadowy.

_Cas, _she thought weakly as Ryan hastily took the heels off of her feet, tossing them into the corner of the room.

_Cas, I need you_, _I need you to hear me, _she prayed, her world spinning out of control as the mattress squeaked with Ryan's added weight. He straddled Sophie's legs, trapping them under his weight as he ran his hands down her body, sliding the straps of her tank top off of her shoulders. "You're so hot for a sophomore," he told her in a low voice, slipping his hands an inch under her top and touching her bare skin, leaning down and pressing his lips to her neck.

Even though her body was weighed down by Ryan's body and the drug he'd given her, her mind was still operating on a functioning level, and she knew that there was no way she could go down without a fight. Dean would hate it if she just gave in. With her last remaining strength, she lifted her arm, reaching for something, anything to defend herself with. Her hand fell onto the base of a lamp on the bedside table. She mustered up everything she had and yanked the lamp off of the desk and smashed it into Ryan's head.

He reared up off of her, holding his head with both of his hands, cursing drunkenly and angrily. Sophie tried to roll away from him, but he quickly grabbed her and shoved her back down in front of him, and she saw in desperation that the only damage she'd managed to inflict had been a small cut above his eyebrow. Sophie felt the fight leave her like someone had flipped a switch inside of her. The dizziness had reached a level where she could barely even turn her head without feeling like she was going to fall off the face of the earth.

Ryan readjusted himself on top of her, tracing his fingers down her neck and to her chest. "C'mon, sweetheat, why you gotta be like this? We're gonna have a great time, you and I."

With that he started to push up her skirt, and tears rolled down Sophie's face. _Cas, please, please help me. Please_.

Ryan was in the process of unbuttoning his pants when the door to the room squeaked open, so softly that Sophie didn't hear. Tears blurred what remained of her vision, and she was trying to push her mind to somewhere else when suddenly Ryan was no longer on top of her.

She turned her head weakly, feeling exhausted and woozy as she slowly sat up and tried to make out the scene in front of her. She looked for Ryan, expecting to see him in the stern clutches of Castiel. When she was finally able to make out what was in front of her eyes, she gasped in horror.

Ryan was lying on the ground by the bed, his neck twisted at a sickening angle. There was no doubt in Sophie's drug-addled mind that he was dead.

And standing over him was Jack.

And when he smiled at her, his eyes flashed black.

**Stay tuned. ~ Lacey**


	37. Chapter 37: Blood

_Chapter 37: Blood_

Sophie stared at the person in front of her, feeling like her heart had just fallen out of her chest. It was Jack, and it wasn't Jack, and she was desperately hoping she was just seeing things as some sort of twisted side effect of the drug Ryan had given her. Despite the fact that she wasn't confident that she could hold herself upright, she slid her body off of the bed and stumbled to her feet.

"Jack," she said weakly.

In response to his name, he gave her another empty smile. "I'm a lot of things, Sophia Winchester, and your surprisingly difficult to possess bookworm of a friend is not one of those things."

She couldn't decide if she was relieved that Jack was being possessed by a demon as opposed to actually _being _a demon, or if she was ten times more terrified. "You're..a demon," she said, fighting against the urge to crumble into a ball on the floor next to Ryan's body in exhaustion and horror. "But you…saved me."

The demon inside of Jack laughed. "Saved you? You think I _saved _you? Oh, Sophia, if I had let that boy keep doing what he was doing and decided to leave you alone, you'd consider yourself lucky." It clucked its tongue in disappointment. "Unfortunately, I'm on a bit of a tight schedule. I didn't even have enough time to pick out a proper meatsuit. Usually, I prefer someone of my own gender. But the opportunity to possess a friend of a Winchester presented itself, and I was short on time, so I couldn't resist."

"You're a girl?" Sophie asked lamely, trying to buy time, not sure of a way out. Any second she was going to collapse into a heap and pass out, helpless to whatever this demon wanted to do to her, and her fear of not being able to save herself was paralyzing in and of itself.

The demon rolled its eyes. "I am a demon who was once a woman. But that's not important. What's important is that you are a threat to my master's existence, and because of that, you must be eliminated."

Sophie shook her head, as if she could clear out the fuzziness. "W..what?"

For the second time, the demon rolled its eyes, and even though she knew it wasn't him, it hurt seeing Jack's face looking so condescending towards her. "You idiot humans with your GHB and Rohypnol and stupid drugs. How does one feel the beautiful rush of power when the victim is splayed unconscious at your feet?"

With two swift steps, the demon possessing Jack walked up to Sophie and placed both of its hands on either side of her head. She couldn't have resisted if she tried. But after a moment, Sophie felt some surge of strange, dark energy creep through her body, and then the demon let go.

Sophie looked up, and she felt…normal. All of the dizziness and lightheadedness was gone. The drug was out of her system. She lifted her arm and squeezed her hand open and shut, momentarily shocked that she had regained full control over her body. She glanced at the body of Ryan under her feet, his eyes open and lightless. For a second, all she could think about was how angry she was that she couldn't have been the one to kick his ass.

And then her eyes narrowed. "Dumb move, bitch."

She lashed out at the demon, striking it across the cheek, trying not to care that it was Jack's body. Its eyes flashed black and it waved its hand, and suddenly Sophie was flying backwards, hitting the bedside table, the corner cutting a deep gash into her back. She groaned, trying to ignore the pain as she moved back up into a standing position.

The demon grinned. "_That's _more like it! _That's _the famous Winchester drive I've heard so much about! This is where it gets interesting, isn't it?"

Sophie glared, calling to mind one of the exorcisms that Sam and Dean had hammered into her memory. "_Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus_—"

The demon inside of Jack yelled and sent her flying into a mirror hanging on the wall, and she screamed as she slammed into it face first, the glass shattering and piercing her everywhere. She slid to the ground, unable to move, a particularly large shard of glass sticking out of her upper right arm. With a small cry, she pulled it out of her arm, causing a thick stream of blood to start surging out from it. A quick look at the floor told her she was seriously hurt, judging by all of the blood splattered everywhere.

Weakly, she tried to continue the exorcism. "_...omnis satanica protestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii_—" Before she could say another word, her throat closed up, and she found herself unable to breathe, lying on the ground attempting to suck in just a sliver of oxygen.

Jack—no, the _demon_—glared at her, its hand held out in a closed fist motion. "Dumb move, bitch," it sneered.

Sophie shook as she tried to get back up, but before she could even rise to her knees the demon threw her back against one of the bedposts, and she could've sworn she felt something inside of her, maybe a rib, crack painfully. Her throat was released and she gasped out in agony, huddled on the ground, feeling blood pouring out of the many glass-filled wounds on her body.

"As I was saying," the demon said snobbishly, pacing back and forth by where Sophie remained immobile on the floor, "your existence directly threatens the existence of my master."

Sophie weakly lifted up her head, enough willpower in her body to glare. "Who's the poor bastard that gets you as his bitch?"

The demon snarled, and Sophie cried out as her body was lifted yet again by some demonic force and tossed into a dresser. Her head cracked against it and she saw stars as her head was covered in warm, sticky blood. She began to feel fuzzy again, not because of the drug Ryan had given her, but because of blood loss.

She saw Jack's shoes in front of her face, and then the demon leaned down to look at Sophie with a twisted smile. "The _bastard _I serve is the most powerful being in the universe—Lucifer." Sophie heard the words, but she couldn't process them. She was having difficulty breathing, and she wondered briefly if her broken rib had punctured a lung, or maybe something else that was vital to her survival.

She tried to move, to even lift her head, but she knew she had lost. She couldn't breathe, couldn't lift a finger without pain searing through her body. "That's right, stupid girl," the demon practically laughed. "I serve Lucifer, and his biggest adversary needs the Winchester brothers to help take him out. And you, lucky Sophia, are the only bargaining chip on the table. Once you're dead, the Winchesters will never fight this battle, and the game will be over."

A few soft tears fell out of Sophie's eyes, commingling with the blood on her face. "Cas," she said, her voice barely a hint of whisper. "Cas, please."

The smile the demon gave her seemed to hunger for her very painful death. "No one can hear you, Little Winchester. It's just you and me. And soon it'll just be me and my master, standing on top of a bleeding, dying human race."

It lifted its hand, clearly preparing to deliver the final blow, and then just as Sophie closed her eyes and waited to die she heard the loud splintering sound of a door being blown off of its hinges.

She cracked her eyes open and squinted through the blood and tears to see a tall shadowy figure sending the demon flying into the wall. Sophie tried to focus in on him, but she just couldn't. "Don't kill him," she tried to yell with everything she had, even though it only came out as a hoarse cry. "That's my friend. Please don't kill…."

And then she was unconscious.

* * *

Sam and Dean were set up in a motel just outside of Lincoln, Nebraska. They had tracked down an old occult scholar there who was supposed to know a thing or two about Beelzebub and the Hierarchy, and with Dean's number getting closer and closer to being up, neither of them wanted to waste any time in trying to find a way to get out of the deal.

Cas had wanted to come with them. Dean didn't know if it was because Cas didn't know much about Beelzebub that the Winchesters didn't already know or if it was something else, but he had asked and Sam and Dean hadn't seen a reason for him not to come. Having Cas with them was never a bad thing. It did leave Sophie alone for a little while, but Dean tried to reconcile it by telling himself that if he didn't find a way out of this deal with Beelzebub, Sophie would be alone for a lot longer than a little while.

Sam was pouring over books and trying desperately to know as much as he could about everything. Dean was talking with Cas at the table by the window of their room.

"Let's pretend this Dr. Thompson doesn't know anything we don't know," Dean tried after taking a drink of the bottle of beer in his hands. "What's our next plan of attack?"

Cas looked thoughtfully at the man he was closest to in the entire universe. "We continue researching. I say we try to figure out which ritual Beelzebub is going to try to use to open the Cage. If we can find a way to thwart the ritual, the Cage can't open, and we buy ourselves more time to figure out how to kill him."

"Remind me why he can't be killed with a demon or angel blade?" Dean asked, rubbing his temple with his hands, feeling a headache coming on.

"No demon in the First Hierarchy can be killed by regular means. As far as I'm aware, only an archangel has the capability to take one out. Also, higher members of the Hierarchy are able to kill lower members."

"So Lucifer is able to kill Beelzebub?" Dean asked in interest. "That might have been important to mention the first time around, Cas."

"Technically, yes, Lucifer can kill Beelzebub," Cas said, shrugging. "But he is in the Cage, making it so that no being that can kill Beelzebub now. So I didn't think it was even worth mentioning."

Dean studied his beer bottle intently. "Would there be a way to lock Beelzebub in the Cage with Lucifer? Let them duke it out in the deepest pit of Hell?"

Cas considered it. "I don't know. That's certainly something I can look int—"

Suddenly, Cas' head snapped up, and he stared off into space, looking straight past Dean. Dean's eyebrows knit together in confusion, and he waved his hand in front of Cas' face. "Hello? Cas, man, come back, we're sort of in the middle of something here."

"Sophie," Cas said darkly.

At that, Dean straightened up. He could hear the gravity in Cas' voice. Sam, who had lent one ear towards the conversation the whole time he'd been reading, stood up from the bed. "What about Sophie?" Dean asked, trying to sound calm.

"She's praying to me," Cas said, closing his eyes, looking pained. "She sounds…." He trailed off, focusing intently.

After a moment, Dean snapped his fingers in front of the angel's face, impatient and feeling a slow, boiling feeling of panic beginning to rise up inside of him. "Cas! How does she sound? What's going on?"

Cas opened his eyes. "Terrified. She sounds terrified."

Dean stood up, trying to ignore his pounding heart and walking around the table to be right by Cas. "Go to her then, Cas! What are you waiting for?"

Cas stood up, and Dean could see the worry in his eyes. And if Cas was worried, Dean knew something was terribly wrong. Without a word, he disappeared, leaving Sam and Dean standing there in the motel room, frozen in fear and unable to do anything but wait.

A minute later, Cas popped back into the room. Dean felt his heart drop when he saw that Sophie wasn't with him. "Cas, where is she!" he yelled.

"Dean," Sam tried, failing to keep the anxiety out of his voice, "let him talk."

Cas had a dark look on his face. "She's not at the bunker, I just checked. And I can hear her prayers but I can't _find _her, not with the cloak she still has."

Dean never thought he'd curse the cloak that kept Sophie off of the supernatural world's radar, but now he did. "Cas, c'mon," he pleaded in a broken voice. "You've got to have some clue."

Cas closed his eyes in concentration. "She's still praying to me. She is scared, and in pain, and I can't quite reach through the barrier, I can't…can't find her…. And her prayers are getting quieter…."

Dean was about to yell something else at Cas in a terror-induced rage when Sam stepped up. "Jack," he cut in. "She's always with her friend Jack. Try him, maybe he can help us find her."

Cas nodded, and again he vanished out of sight.

He was gone longer this time, leaving Sam and Dean stuck in the same spots, silent in their fear. A million thoughts were running through Dean's head, trying to make sense of what was happening, hoping beyond hope that maybe there had just been some miscommunication on Cas' angel radio that made him _think _that Sophie was in danger, and she was actually just having a nice time at the movies or the mall or even at Jack's house.

After five minutes of nothing, he felt something give in his hand, and he looked down to see that he'd been gripping his beer bottle so tightly that it had shattered in his grasp, the remaining alcohol inside of it soaking into the carpet. One of the shards had nicked Dean's thumb, but he didn't even feel the sting. Sam looked at his brother with heavy eyes. "Dean—"

He was interrupted by the telltale _whoosh _of wings signaling Cas' return. Dean had gotten so used to Cas' entrances that the novelty of the angel not being there at one moment and being there the next had worn off.

But nothing could have prepared Dean for the sight of a battered, bloodied Sophie in the angel's arms.

She was wearing clothes Dean had never seen her in, a tight skirt and a tank top that had slid down her body due to the straps that had fallen off her shoulders, showing the top of her bra. There was blood everywhere, running down her arms, legs, and collarbone from multiple lacerations all over her body. Underneath the blood her skin was pale, paler than Dean had ever seen it. Blood coated the left side of her pale face, pouring out from a wound on her head, which rested against Cas' chest and stained his white shirt and trench coat. Her eyes were closed, and he couldn't see the rise and fall of her chest to see if she was even breathing.

"No," he said in a detached voice, frozen as Cas quickly placed her on one of the beds.

The angel turned to look at Dean, determination in his eyes. "She's alive. I will heal her when I return, but I must catch the one who did this."

"Cas, no!" Sam yelled, but Cas had already disappeared yet again.

Once he was gone, Sam rushed to Sophie's side, gently placing a hand on her head and pushing back her hair, which had come out of its ponytail and was a mess of strawberry blonde curls and blood. Sam looked up at his brother, his eyes hard. "Dean! Don't just stand there! Go get towels from the bathroom. We need to slow this bleeding if we're going to keep her alive until Cas gets back!"

Dean was snapped out of his daze, his blood pumping fast as he ran into the bathroom, grabbing every last towel before running back to Sophie's bedside, tossing a hand towel to Sam before grabbing his own. Sam gently placed his towel to Sophie's head, and within seconds the towel was completely red.

Dean felt sick. "C'mon, Soph," he practically growled, grabbing his towel and bunching it up in his hands. "Stay with me, kiddo." He saw a particularly heavy stream of blood running down her side, and he saw underneath ripped fabric a large gash that ran from her waist to her back, disappearing under her body. He clenched his teeth as he put pressure on as much of the wound as he could. After another glance, he could see an awful bruise forming all along her ribcage, sending off warning bells in Dean's brain—there had to be some sort of internal damage. "Soph, please, wake up." She was just as unresponsive, just as cold and pale and unmoving. Dean felt his eyes stinging. "Sophie Winchester, dammit, wake up!"

"Dean," Sam said harshly.

"Don't 'Dean' me, Sam, look at her!" he yelled.

As if in response, Sophie's body trembled, and then her lips parted. Dean and Sam stared at her intently, wishfully, waiting for her eyes to open.

But then she coughed, and blood spilled out of her mouth.

**Is this too evil a place to end the chapter? If so, no fear - there's more to come, and I don't think you'll be disappointed by the next chapter. ~ Lacey**


	38. Chapter 38: You're Worse Than Dead

_Chapter 38: You're Worse Than Dead_

Dean's heart dropped out of his chest when he saw Sophie's mouth stained red, but his body reacted instantly. "Lift her up, Sammy!" he demanded.

Sam gently slid his arms under Sophie's beaten body and lifted her up, and her eyes flew open and made contact with Dean's. He couldn't explain the feeling of panic that hit him straight in the chest when he saw the fear and agony in her gaze.

And then she started choking, blood dripping from her mouth, gasping for oxygen that didn't seem to be making its way into her body.

"Sophie!" Dean yelled. "Sophie, dammit, you stay with me! You stay alive until Cas comes back, do you hear me?"

His heart broke when he saw her weakly nod before coughing again, her body wracked with spasms from the pain it was bringing her.

"Sammy," Dean said, looking over at Sam, who was trying to angle Sophie so that she'd be able to clear her airway. It didn't seem to be working.

"Something's seriously wrong, Dean," Sam replied, his eyes filled with a growing dread. "I think she must have a punctured lung, and it's filling up with blood. If Cas doesn't get here soon—"

"CAS!" Dean roared. "CAS, GET BACK HERE!"

At that moment, Sophie stopped moving. Her eyes fluttered shut and she slumped into a bleeding ball against the pillows, blood dripping from her mouth as her chest stopped rising and falling.

"No," Dean said as he watched her. He pulled himself onto the bed next to her, Sam looking on in shock and heartbreak as Dean pulled Sophie's unresponsive body up against his, her head falling listlessly onto his shoulder. Dean wrapped his arms around her, remembering how he had held her similarly the night he'd told her that she'd always be his first priority. Tears stung his eyes. "No, no, no. Sophie, c'mon, just a little longer, sweetheart. Cas is coming, he's coming…. CAS! CA—"

There was a banging sound, and Cas was yelling as he tumbled back into the room out of thin air, wrestling with someone, or something. Sam leapt up from his spot by Sophie's bed and ran to help Cas.

"It's a demon, Sam!" Cas exclaimed, his arms grappling with his attacker.

Sam didn't need to be told twice. He grabbed Cas' assailant and threw him against the door of the motel before stepping back, pulling Cas back with him. The demon launched itself at them—and then froze, looking down and narrowing its eyes when it saw the symbol spray-painted on the ground.

Sam, breathing heavily, glared at the demon. "Devil's trap, you son of a bitch."

"CAS!" Dean yelled from across the room, feeling a cold dread creep through him as he looked down at his daughter. Sophie hadn't moved an inch since she had collapsed.

Cas whipped his head around and rushed towards Sophie. He gently cupped her head in his hands and closed his eyes for a moment before releasing her. Sophie seemed to shimmer for a moment, and then suddenly her wounds were gone. She was still covered in blood, but the cuts and gashes and bruises all over her body had disappeared.

But she didn't move.

"Cas," Dean choked out in disbelief. "Is it too late?"

The angel glared at Dean. "No. Her injuries run deep. Give the grace a moment to run its course."

Dean waited, his arms curled tightly around Sophie, his forehead resting on top of her head, his eyes closed. He didn't realize he was praying in his head until he realized Cas wasn't responding, because he hadn't been praying to Cas—he'd been praying to whatever force in the universe that had the power to keep his daughter alive.

And then Sophie slowly lifted her head up, causing Dean to lift his head up and look at her. Her eyes were wide and scared, and she sat up and turned to meet Dean's gaze.

"Dad?" she whispered shakily.

"Oh my God," he said, feeling a relief he'd never experienced course through his veins as he tightened his arms around Sophie, pulling her against him. She trembled as he brought her closer, and when her forehead hit his chest she started sobbing. Tears fell uncontrollably down her face and onto his shirt and he just held her, not caring that he was probably holding her too tightly, thinking about how just seconds before he had thought that she wasn't making it out of that day alive. He held her, letting his heartbeat slowly return to a semi-normal pace, rubbing Sophie's back mechanically. "You're okay," he said quietly, more to himself than to her. "You're okay."

The moment was interrupted by a slow clap. "Well done, Winchesters and Co.," the demon in the trap laughed maniacally. "Really, spot on. My heart is so touched right now. Does anyone have a tissue? I could really use a tissue."

Cas lifted his hand and pointed towards the demon, and suddenly its ability to speak ceased to exist.

Sam whipped his head to look at Cas. "Why didn't you kill him?" he asked, his voice surprisingly harsh.

"Sophie begged me not to," the angel replied flatly.

"What?" Dean asked, unwilling to push Sophie off of him to ask her any questions. Her sobs were dying down, but she was still in a state of shock. He didn't blame her. She was a sixteen-year-old who just escaped death by a millimeter.

"The demon possessed her friend Jack," Cas said quietly. "She begged me not to kill him because she knew it'd kill Jack, too."

Dean took a look at the demon. His first reaction was that he was annoyed. Not because the demon who had just almost killed his daughter was in the same room as him, but because the boy it was possessing was a very handsome teenager who more than likely had a thing for his daughter. And then he felt frustration, because he knew that he could not kill the demon without killing someone Sophie cared deeply about.

And Dean wanted that demon to be very, very dead.

Slowly, Sophie lifted herself off of Dean, looking down at her still bloodied body. Shakily, she slung her feet off the bed.

"Woah, woah," Dean said, hopping off of the bed and quickly making his way to the other side, gently putting his hands on her shoulders, meaning to push her back down to keep her off of her feet and, more importantly, away from the demon, even if it was stuck inside the Devil's trap. But when Dean's hands fell on her shoulders, she flinched away from him, and he pulled his hands back in shock. "Soph…."

Realizing what she'd done, she sniffed, trying to keep the next onslaught of tears under control. "I'm okay," she said quietly. "I'm all healed. Let me stand up, please."

He stepped back, still surprised that she'd recoiled from him like that. She got up from the bed, standing and looking down at her ripped, bloodied party clothes.

Her lower lip trembled, but she looked up at Dean. "Do you have s-something I can wear?" she asked, her voice still weak with shock.

Dean nodded, grabbing his bag from underneath the bed and hastily rummaging through it before grabbing a green T-shirt that would practically be a dress on Sophie, not to mention longer than the skirt she was wearing.

He handed it to her, and when she reached out to accept it he couldn't help but focus on all of the blood left on her arms. "Thanks," she said before silently slipping into the bathroom. Dean stood, staring at the door until he heard the sound of the shower turning on.

Immediately, Dean charged towards the demon, who was wearing a smile on its face, and Sam had to use all of the muscles in his body to hold his brother back. "Dean, I know you can't see it, but that's her friend," Sam tried to reason with him.

"You almost killed my daughter, you son of a bitch," Dean practically hissed over Sam's shoulder, his face red, his jaw taut. "You're worse than dead."

The demon looked at Cas expectantly, and with a reluctant exhalation Cas let the demon have its ability to speak. "And how do you plan to kill me?" the demon asked in a syrupy voice that didn't quite seem to match it's physical form. "I'm riding the body of your precious Sophia's best friend. Or are they lovers? I really can't tell. Seriously, the will-they-won't-they is keeping me on the edge of my seat. Either way, she's not going to like it if you drive a blade into my heart."

"There are other ways to kill a demon," Dean growled menacingly. "And I'll make damn sure to find a way that hurts like hell."

The demon inspected Jack's nails. "Tell your daughter it should weird her out that her lover has perfect cuticles. This level of personal hygiene is not normal."

Dean shoved Sam off of him. "You mention my daughter one more time—"

"And you'll do what? Keep making empty threats? Why don't you start asking the questions you want answers to, Winchester, and then maybe we'll get somewhere."

Dean breathed heavily, staring straight into the demon's eyes. The only sound was the shower still running in the bathroom.

Sam spoke first. "Who are you?"

"I go by Taylor," the demon said. "Typically, I like meatsuits that are, like me, female. But tonight I just couldn't pass up the chance to get up close and personal with a Winchester, so I hijacked Perfect Fingernails here."

"What beef do you have with us?" Sam continued.

"I'm serving my master, Lucifer," Taylor snapped. At the sound of the Devil's name, Sam straightened and Dean and Cas gave each other dark looks. "He's not a huge fan of you two plotting with Beelzebub to have him killed. And Sophia is the one thing he's able to use to strong-arm you into handing over your soul. So we need to remove her from the picture."

Dean glared at Taylor. "Well, it's too late, bitch. I already signed over my soul, so it's game over for Lucifer."

Taylor narrowed her—his?—eyes, and grinned. "My job is to be thorough. Besides, who doesn't want to say they killed the daughter of the great Dean Winchester? I'm sure she'll only cause more problems in the future. Call it a preventative measure, if you will. Either way, Lucifer would have loved me above all his other followers."

"Love," Sam cut in, giving a humorless laugh. "Lucifer doesn't love. He doesn't love, or like, or appreciate, or respect. All he does is hate, on varying levels of intensity. You picked the wrong team."

"So what?" Taylor asked. "Like Beelzebub's team is the right team? Either way, this earth is screwed. I'm just trying to pick the winning side here."

Cas turned to Dean, interrupting whatever he was about to say next. "We need to exorcise her."

Dean looked at Cas like he was crazy. "Are you kidding me? We need answers!"

"She'll be back," Cas said, looking at the demon closely. "Her master will command her, and she'll have no choice. We can deal with her then."

Dean knew what he was saying in unspoken words. _We need to save Jack now, before something happens and he gets killed_. Dean walked right up to the edge of the Devil's trap, looking Taylor in the eye.

"I want you to know," he said in a low voice, "that this is definitely not over, and that the moment before you cease to exist, I will be the last thing you ever lay your fugly black eyes on."

And then he began chanting the exorcism, and the demon writhed and twisted in pain, yelling at the top of its lungs. Black smoke poured out of Jack's mouth, and soon enough Taylor was catapulted back to Hell, and Jack collapsed inside of the Devil's trap, unconscious.

Sam walked forward and lifted Jack up from underneath his arms, dragging him over to the bed that Sophie hadn't been on and setting him down on top of it.

"It'll be a while until he wakes up," Cas said.

Dean whirled on Cas. "Tell us everything you saw from the moment you found her until the moment you brought Taylor back here."

Cas sighed, looking exhausted. Dean immediately felt bad for snapping at him. Cas has used up a lot of his angel mojo going back and forth to save Sophie and bring back Taylor, not to mention to bring Sophie back from the brink of death. If Dean had been an apologetic man, he'd have said he was sorry. As it was, Cas simply shrugged out of his bloodied trenchcoat and sat down at the table.

"I located Jack easily enough. They were at some sort of gathering, with awful loud screeching music and an exorbitant amount of alcohol, and it was all hot and full of perspiration—"

"A party?" Dean asked in shock. "Sophie was at a party?"

"Well, I thought parties were supposed to be fun, and that certainly did not look like fun to me."

"I can't believe Sophie was at a party," Dean said, looking over at Sam. "Maybe she does have a little of me in her."

"What happened next, Cas?" Sam asked, giving Dean a look.

"By the time I arrived there, it was almost too late," Cas said darkly. "They were up in a secluded room in the house. Jack—well, Taylor—was about to kill her, and she was barely conscious on the floor. I guess Taylor was…taking her time. There was also the body of a young man in the room, and judging by the way he was dressed he was one of the partygoers. It was too late to save him, as his neck had been snapped cleanly." Cas heaved a great sigh. "Anyway, I managed to incapacitate Taylor long enough to get Sophie out of there, and I brought her back here to you. By the time I got back to the party, Taylor had already tried to flee, but I managed to grab her before she could get too far, and I brought her back here."

Sam crossed his arms and shook his head sadly. "We need to figure out who the kid who died was. Maybe it was one of Sophie's friends."

Dean rubbed his face with his hands, looking towards the bathroom. "She's been in there for a long time," he noted in concern.

"There was a lot of blood on her," Cas pointed out.

Dean gave him a look.

"Girls take long showers to have alone time, Dean," Sam said. "And God knows she might want some right now."

Dean walked over to the little fridge the motel had supplied them with and pulled out a beer. "I need something about five million times stronger than this," he said, cracking it open and taking a long drink of it.

"Maybe you should go to the party," Cas offered. "They appeared to have more than enough to share."

Dean sat down at the table across from Cas. "I still can't believe Sophie was at a party. I mean, the girl is a saint." He looked at Sam. "Remember when she wrote her librarian an apology note for turning in a book late?"

Sam gave a little grin. "I do." Then his grin fell, and he looked thoughtful for a moment. "She's a teenager, Dean. She was bound to do something less than perfect at one point or another. Considering the fact that you're her father, we should be lucky a party is the worst we've gotten."

At that moment, the door to the bathroom opened, and Dean turned quickly. He hadn't even heard the shower turn off. Sophie walked out, the blood washed off of her body. Dean's shirt nearly fell to her knees, and her wet hair fell around across her shoulders. From a distance she was whole and healthy. But Dean saw her eyes, and they were dark and fearful and haunted.

The first thing she did was take her torn, ruined party clothes and dump them silently in the trashcan. Then she walked meekly up to Cas and whispered something in his ear. Cas looked at her with calm affection. "Of course," he said.

He disappeared again, and wasn't even gone long enough for Dean to ask Sophie what she'd asked him before the angel returned, a bag in his hands. He handed it to her and she disappeared back into the bathroom, reemerging a minute later wearing sweatpants and a large, thickly knit cardigan over Dean's shirt.

"Thanks, Cas," she said quietly when she closed the bathroom door and tossed the bag on the floor. Sam, Dean, and Cas looked at her. She shrank back under their stares, crossing her arms and walking over to the bed that Jack was passed out on, sitting on the edge of it and looking at his calm, sleeping face. "Is he okay?"

"Yeah," Sam said. "He will be. He's going to be pretty confused when he wakes up, though."

Sophie looked upset looking at him. "I hate that out of everyone that demon could've used, it was him."

"Demons like to do whatever it takes to hurt their target as much as possible," Sam explained in a gentle voice.

Sophie nodded, her eyes going hard. "Yeah. I get that now."

Cas walked up to Sophie. "I'm glad you are safe now, little lion, but I have to go. There are things I need to take care of back at the party so that people do not suspect that anything out of the ordinary has happened."

Sophie nodded. "Thank you, Cas. For everything."

He nodded, and then for the last time that night, he disappeared.

Dean cleared his throat. He knew what he needed to talk to Sophie about, even though he didn't want to. "Soph…I know this is a bad time, but… Sam and I need to talk to you about something back at that party."

"I know, I shouldn't have gone," Sophie cut in, turning her gaze from Jack to Dean, her voice at such a low volume Dean could barely hear her. "Believe me, I know that now."

"No," Dean said, shaking his head. "The party...Soph, I could care less about the party. It's about someone _at_ the party."

She looked a little confused. "The demon?"

Dean shook his head again. "No. You should know that...in the room Cas found you in, there was a body, and it was someone from the party. It was probably one of your classmates that you've gotten to know so well. And that's probably what Cas is going to deal with right now."

Her reaction was nothing that he could've expected. Her face went blank, and for the first time Dean couldn't get a read on how or what she was feeling. "I know," she said emotionlessly. "His name was Ryan."

Sam and Dean exchanged a look. This was not the normal reaction of someone whose peer had just been killed, probably right in front of her eyes. "Soph, I know that this is hard—," Dean tried again.

"It's not," she cut in. "Ryan's dead now, and there's nothing I can do to change that."

Dean walked up to Sophie, meaning to put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Soph, I'm sorry—"

"Don't," she snapped quickly, pushing his hand away and cringing away from him, standing up from Jack's bed and putting a few feet of distance between Dean and herself. Dean took a step backwards, trying not to outwardly show that her reaction hurt. Realizing what she done, she looked horrified. "I'm sorry," she blurted out. "I just…I wasn't…." She took a moment to collect herself, taking a deep breath. "Ryan died because he was with me when the demon found me. And as crazy as it sounds, the demon killing him…saved me."

Sam and Dean could not have looked more confused. Sophie ran her fingers nervously through her hair and sat on the edge of the bed she'd nearly died in, and Sam and Dean sat down at the table. They looked at her, not pushing her, waiting for her to explain.

Sophie looked down at her fingers, which were tightly clasped together in her lap. Her first instinct was to not tell Sam or Dean anything about what had happened with Ryan that night before the demon had come. But she'd already lied, or at least omitted the truth, about going to the party.

And look where that had gotten her.

She took a deep breath. "Ryan was one of the guys taking money at the door. He liked me, I guess. And later, he came up to me and while I wasn't looking, he sort of…put something in my drink, I don't know what." She looked up and her eyes sparkled with more tears. "I was being as responsible as any dumb teenager at a party can be, I really was, I only had two drinks the whole night! But I knew when everything started spinning that something was really wrong, so I tried to find Jack, and I ended up in the hall trying to call Jack and then I was going to call you but there was no service and then…and then Ryan was there." Her voice had shrunk back to a small, hollow version of itself.

Dean didn't want to hear anymore. He felt sick, knowing where she was going with this. And judging by how Sam had tensed up angrily beside him, he knew where she was going with the story as well.

Sophie looked up and saw the angry, protective vibes that Sam and Dean were giving off, and quickly she kept going. "He didn't actually…you know. But…it was really close, and it would've…would've happened if…if the demon hadn't showed up." She cringed at her own words. "God, I can't believe all of this is happening. I can't believe I was almost…and then I almost _died_…and now Jack! He's going to think I'm c-crazy!"

Dean didn't know what to say to her. He was still trying to fathom everything that she'd been through in just a couple of hours. Luckily, Sam jumped up, sitting by Sophie and slowly wrapping an arm around her. She looked up at him, watery eyed. "Soph," he said, "today has been awful. You don't need to dig up anything else to tell us right now, okay? We can talk about the rest of this later. How about we find some new sheets for this bed, and then you can try to get some rest?"

She sniffed and nodded, looking over her shoulder at Jack. "When is he supposed to wake up?"

"I don't know," Sam said truthfully. "But Dean and I are going to stay up and watch out for you both."

Sophie sniffed again. "Thanks, Sam."

He pulled her into a quick hug and kissed the top of her head. "I'm just glad you're okay," he said before letting her go.

Sam and Dean silently stripped the bed of the bloodied sheets as Sophie sat by Jack, unwilling to watch. Then, when Sam pulled out a fresh change of sheets from the closet, Sophie helped him put them on the bed.

When the bed was made, she silently crawled under the blankets, letting her head hit the pillows and her eyes shut. She could feel the exhaustion eating her from the inside out, but a part of her brain didn't want to shut down. It just kept thinking about the fear, and the pain.

And then the mattress creaked, and her first reaction was to defend herself from some monster, supernatural or otherwise. But then a familiar hand gently tucked an unruly strand of hair behind her ear, and she looked up to see Dean sitting next to her, looking at her intently. "You're safe now, Sophie," he promised, his eyes unreadable. "So sleep as long as you can."

Hearing his words of reassurance had a calming effect on her, and she nodded, closing her eyes again.

She felt him lean down and place a short, soft kiss on her temple. If she hadn't just been traumatized, she might have grinned.

And then Dean spoke one last time, in a voice so quiet that Sophie almost missed it. "I think it'd be okay if you kept calling me 'Dad' from now on, too, kiddo."

And just before she slipped into a heavy sleep, Sophie smiled.

**Hope you guys liked it, and thanks a million to all you readers, favoriters, and reviewers! ****Look out for an early update later on in the week! **** ~ Lacey :)**


	39. Chapter 39: Our Third Party Is The Devil

_Chapter 39: Our Third Party is the Devil_

Dean snapped his fingers a few times in front of Sophie's face to make sure she was asleep, and then he turned back to look at Sam. "I guess we're not meeting with Dr. Thompson anymore."

Sam just shook his head. "I can't believe she was almost…that this Ryan kid almost…."

Dean gritted his teeth, focusing on the dried blood on his hands. He walked over to the room's tiny sink and started to wash the blood off of his skin. "Only cowards use roofies. If she'd had a fair shot at him without being drugged, she would've kicked his ass."

"I know," Sam agreed. "I hate that he's dead."

Dean nodded, watching Sophie's blood circle the drain. The sight of it made something twist in his stomach. "I wish I could've put the fear of God into him. Or kill him. If he wasn't a minor, I'd have killed him. And if he was younger, by the time I was done with him, he would've wished he was eighteen."

Sam sat down at the table. "And as if what he did isn't going to permanently scar her, what the hell was that with this demon Taylor? How did she even find Sophie?"

Dean shook his head, drying his hands off and thinking back to those terrifying moments where he thought his daughter was gone. "Taylor's like…a Lucifer groupie. She reminded me a lot of Meg. And…if I had to guess, she's been tracking down Sophie since Beelzebub started climbing the ladder, trying to take out anyone that might give him a leg up. And the moment we were out of town and Sophie went out unprotected, Taylor made her move." Dean rubbed his face with his freshly cleaned hands. "We're going to have to take her out of school, maybe even change her name again."

Sam stood back up, going to grab a beer from the fridge. "Maybe, maybe not. We don't know the whole story yet." He cracked open the beer and took a drink from it, his eyes narrowed as he tossed another one to Dean. "It's never cut and dry with any of these things, is it? It's never just Us versus Them. There always has to be some third party that's screwing around with things."

"Yeah, and this time our third party is the Devil," Dean said, shaking his head. "Seriously, I thought we were done with him."

"Same," Sam said, absentmindedly running his finger over the scar on his hand, the one that had helped him forget about his torturous time spent with Lucifer in the Cage. That was a period of his past best left in the past, and he wasn't sure how he felt about it being drudged up again.

When Sam lifted his head to look back at his brother, he saw that Dean was glancing over at the huddled, sleeping form of Sophie. "She never would have been safe on her own without me," he said out of the blue. Sam looked at him in surprise. He knew that was still something Dean struggled with, despite the fact that he loved Sophie and ultimately thought his decision to have her live with them was the right one.

Still, Sam knew that it was a question that kept Dean up at night—did bringing in Sophie sign her death warrant?

Dean took a deep breath before explaining himself. "I mean, Beelzebub said himself that he knew she existed even before I did, when she lived in Apex. If it wasn't that vampire Sebastian, some other monster would have found her and used her against me; maybe even Beelzebub himself. So at the end of the day…we're the best chance she's got, Sam."

"Yeah," Sam said, realizing what he said was true. "I guess we are."

They were quiet for a while, both thoughtfully drinking their beers, knowing that there was no way either of them were going to sleep that night, not with two traumatized teenagers passed out on their beds.

Dean set his beer back down. "What are we gonna do with the boyfriend?"

"C'mon, Dean, hasn't he been through enough to be called by his actual name?"

Dean shrugged. "Until we've sat down and had a talk, man to man, about what exactly will happen to him if he impregnates Sophie, he hasn't been through enough."

Sam gave him a half-heartedly reprimanding look. "Well, judging by what the kid went through today, I don't think you're going to have to worry about that. I can't see the poor kid wanting to stick around after what happened."

Dean shook his head, getting another swig of his beer. He knew how painful it would be for Sophie to lose a friend out of all of this after everything that she had been through. "Maybe we should just see if Cas can muster up enough angel mojo to wipe his memory."

Sam stared down at his beer. "I don't know, I think that's maybe his call. Or at least Sophie's. After all, he's her friend."

"I guess," Dean said. He took another drink from his bottle, only to discover it was empty. Getting up to get another one, he glanced over at Jack. "Is it just me, or does he look like a younger, hotter Ashton Kutcher?"

Sam looked at Dean, eyebrows raised. "And do you often think about a younger, hotter Ashton Kutcher?"

"Bite me, Sam, you know what I mean," Dean shot back, cracking open his second beer.

"I guess I see it. Maybe. Something about the nose."

"I don't like that Sophie is dating a younger, hotter Ashton Kutcher," Dean grumbled.

"We're not dating."

If Sam and Dean's heads had turned any faster at the sound of the voice, their necks might have snapped. Sitting up in his bed, looking freaked out and indignant, was Jack.

Sam and Dean were a little lost for words, and so Jack quickly slid out of bed and onto his feet. "Look, it doesn't matter," he said, shaking his head. "I know I'm in a dream. I just need to get the hell out of it as quickly as possible."

Dean cleared his throat. "Look, kid," he started.

"No," Jack cut him off. "Don't _look, kid _me. I'm just going to wait out this whole nightmare until I wake up." He turned and saw Sophie wiped out on the bed next to him, and his eyes widened. "I…she's alive? In my dream I was sure…."

Sam stood up. "Jack, I get that this is crazy, but you're awake right now."

Jack shook his head. "No. There's no way. If I was awake…I mean, I just…something inside of me almost _killed_ her," he said, looking at Sophie. His eyes were pained and confused.

Dean couldn't watch it anymore. He walked over to the sink in the motel room, grabbed one of the Styrofoam cups that came with the dysfunctional coffee maker, and filled it with water. Then he walked up to Jack and wordlessly threw the water in his face. Jack jumped violently, water running down his face as he stared in shock.

"There," Dean deadpanned. "You're officially not dreaming. Got it?"

"Dean," Sam reprimanded halfheartedly, as if scolding a recalcitrant toddler.

"What? The kid needs to sober up so we can figure out what the hell we're going to do with him."

"Do with me?" Jack asked, wiping water off of his face in haste. "Look, if I'm really not dreaming, I just got body-hijacked by a freaking _demon_. You should be explaining stuff to me, because I feel like I just got dumped into a particularly crappy _Supernatural_ book."

Sam and Dean exchanged a look. "Maybe we should introduce ourselves," Sam said finally. "I'm Sam Winchester. And this is my brother, Dean."

Dean could see all of the pieces clicking together behind Jack's eyes. "Sam and Dean. Like…from the books."

They nodded. "Those weren't fiction," Sam said. "They were based off of the lives we lead."

"Winchester," Jack repeated slowly. "But…Sophie's dad and uncle are named…."

Sam and Dean just stared at him, and Jack shook his head, as if trying to dispel the realization and hoping it was just a joke. And then, when he saw that Sam and Dean were not in fact joking, he released a colorfully explicit exclamation, and then he looked up in horror. "This has to be the worst way to meet you two for the first time."

"Got that right," Dean snorted, finally starting on his second beer. "I was sort of hoping I could be sitting there with a shotgun in my hand when you came in, all intimidating and whatnot."

"With all due respect, sir, I'm pretty sure you exorcising a demon from my body is a hell of a lot more intimidating than sitting in a recliner with a gun."

"Touché," Dean offered, finding that he was reluctantly liking the kid in front of him. "So you remember everything that happened while Taylor possessed you?"

Jack nodded, his eyes growing a bit darker. "Yeah. I…I killed someone."

"No, you didn't kill anyone," Sam cut in. "Taylor did."

"Doesn't matter," Jack muttered. "If I hadn't been possessed and I'd walked in on what Ryan was doing to Sophie, I'd have killed him anyway."

Dean looked at him sharply. "You remember that? You saw what happened?"

Jack looked uncomfortable, as if just realizing he'd admitted to Sophie's _father _that he'd seen a boy assaulting his daughter. "I did."

Dean clearly waited for him to say more. "And?"

"And I…we…Taylor got there just in time," Jack responded, sounding exhausted and peeved. "Snapped his neck like a twig just because he was there, not because he was about to….." He trailed for a moment. "Sophie was so out of it she didn't even see it happen…." Jack shook his head, clearly sinking back into memories that shouldn't even be his to have. "I mean, I don't know how long she was in there with him. I think I left her to go take care of my sister about ten or fifteen minutes before, and then Taylor got me on my way to finding her…."

"Take care of your sister?" Sam interrupted. "What happened?"

Jack shook his head. "Too much to drink," he said absentmindedly. "She's a lightweight and recently discovered tequila." Dean and Sam both nodded their heads knowingly. Suddenly, Jack's head snapped up. "Jamie and Harry must be freaking out. It's been hours…."

"Don't worry about it," Sam said. "A friend of ours is over there fixing things up. I'll give him a call and have him talk to your sister and her boyfriend." He pulled out his phone and made to leave the room for a moment before turning back to Dean. "Play nice," he warned, before opening the motel door and walking through it, the phone to his ear.

Jack looked down at Sophie. "How is she alive?" he asked after a moment. "I remember…Taylor was pretty sure it was a done deal, even though Sophie was rescued. There was blood everywhere…."

"You read those _Supernatural_ books, right?" Dean said.

"Yeah."

"So you remember Castiel?"

Jack's eyes widened. "You're joking. He's real?"

Dean nodded. "I'm surprised Sophie's never mentioned him."

Jack shrugged. "She's mentioned a friend of the family named Cas, not an angel protector named Castiel."

"Angel protector," Dean repeated. "Yeah, I guess that's kind of what he is for her. Either way, he found her and healed her. He also went back and got you, so you can thank him for that."

"So this is…this is normal," Jack said, shaking his head. "Paranormal is normal."

"Yep," Dean said. "Not exactly an ideal world, but it's the one we've got."

Jack walked over and sat down at the edge of the bed he'd just woken up on, his face filled with a deep shock. "The books never mentioned you had a daughter," Jack said.

"Probably because I didn't know about her until recently," Dean admitted.

Jack just nodded. "Makes sense. Or at least, makes sense that you had a daughter you didn't know about. I mean, if we're going off of the books, you've probably had sex in every state." Then he visibly winced. "I keep forgetting you're her dad. Please forget I said that."

Dean was starting to like him, which he hated to admit. He glanced at the kid from head to toe. "Why are you taking this so well? Lots of people don't really react so calmly to there being a whole world they never knew anything about."

"This is calm?" Jack asked incredulously, gesturing towards his shocked appearance.

"Yeah, it actually is," Dean said.

Jack glanced back over at Sophie, who was still sleeping deeply. "For starters, you being here at all is just sort of proof. My memories of being trapped in my own body by a freaking demon is proof. But I mean, I've also always been…I don't know, mentally open to the idea that there are things in the world beyond my understanding. So this isn't…too crazy for me."

Dean just looked at him. He hated to admit it, but Sophie had picked a good friend. A tough one, and a brave one, albeit a little soft around the edges.

Maybe, just maybe, Dean wouldn't kill him.

Before Dean could say anything, Sam walked back in. "Alright," he said in a businesslike voice. "Cas is getting everything smoothed out at that party. Judging by the sounds in the background, it was kind of out of control."

Both of the Winchesters looked sharply in Jack's direction, and he looked incredibly uncomfortable. "It's the Bash," he said. "Lebanon Central throws it at the end of every school year, and it's kind of legendary…. Sophie wasn't exactly gung-ho on going, but it's…I don't know, it's sort of a rite of passage."

Dean narrowed his eyes. "I'm pretty sure what almost happened to Soph wasn't a rite of passage."

For the first time that night, Dean found that Jack looked pissed. "What almost happened to her isn't because she decided to have one night of fun at a high school party, Mr. Winchester. It's because Ryan Scott is…_was_ a giant, drunk dick with zero regard for anyone's personal wellbeing except for his own."

Dean nodded, a little taken aback by his forcefulness and his defense of Sophie. "Guess you're right." He looked at Sam. "I still can't believe she went to a party. I think I'm proud. I mean, obviously I hate everything that happened, but if you take away all of that…."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Of course you're proud."

Dean looked over at Jack. "You've got to tell me. What did she drink? Was it like some dumb fruity girly drink? Or, no, it was probably Natty Light, that's all you kids can afford for the most part."

Jack looked a little lost for words. "Um…she had rum and Coke."

Dean looked thoughtful. "Huh. Not a terrible choice."

Jack just looked at him like he was crazy. Sam jumped in. "This is not exactly the most highly functioning family unit," he explained.

Jack nodded. "I'm starting to see that."

Dean stood up, tossing his now empty beer bottle into the trash. "Look, tomorrow's going to be long and uncomfortable," he said. "Maybe you should try to get some rest. And don't tell me you're not tired, because I know after that possession and exorcism, you're toast."

Jack looked for a moment like he was going to protest, and then he just exhaled. "Jamie and Harry know I'm okay?" he asked again.

"Yeah," Sam replied.

"And…Sophie's going to be okay?"

Dean's hard look towards him softened a little. "Yeah, kid, she'll be fine."

He nodded. "Alright. I guess a few more hours wouldn't kill me."

Jack made his way back over to the bed and slid under the covers. Sam and Dean weren't surprised when less than five minutes later, they could hear gentle snoring.

**Hey, all! I was going to make a super duper long chapter including this with the next one, but I really felt like I wanted Jack's introduction to Sam and Dean to be separate from everything else, so I made it its own chapter and posted it earlier. There will be an update on Saturday morning as usual, as well.**

**Glad you guys are still tuning in and enjoying the story! Keep on coming back for more! ~ Lacey :)**


	40. Chapter 40: 5:07 AM

_Chapter 40: 5:07 AM_

It was nearly five in the morning, and Sam and Dean were finding it difficult not to nod off as they sat in their chairs and let the teenagers under their watch get as much sleep as possible. Sam was glued to his laptop, trying to stay awake by the bright light of the screen, and Dean was rifling through the local newspaper, bored to death by the mundane news about local high school athletic stars and next week's weather.

But neither brother was going to fall asleep.

In fact, there was no way they were going to sleep, because just as Dean glanced at the blaring red numbers on the alarm clock that red 5:07 A.M., Sophie rolled over in her bed. He wouldn't have thought anything of it, but then she rolled back over. Her head tossed slowly back and forth, and her eyebrows were knitted together. She released a low mumble, her words inaudible. Dean looked over at Sam, who had set his laptop back on the table and was looking over at his niece sadly.

"Nightmares," he noted, as if it weren't obvious.

Dean watched helplessly as Sophie kept tossing and turning, a thin sheet of sweat beginning to develop on her forehead. Her mumbling grew louder until finally, he could make out words. "Stop," she whimpered. "Stop, don't…." Her voice drifted off again, turning back into mumbling.

Dean put his head in his hands, unable to look at her. She was quiet for a few minutes, and her movement slowed down. He hoped beyond hope that it had passed.

But then he could hear the familiar squeaking of the mattress, and the rustling of sheets. And then the whimpering resumed. "Cas, help," she moaned. "He won't stop."

Dean lifted his head up to look at Sam. "We need to wake her up."

Sam shook his head. "You know just as well as I do that you can't wake up from the really bad ones."

Dean hated it, but Sam was right. He snuck another look at Sophie. Her head was rolling back and forth again, her hair damp with sweat. "Stop!" she said more forcefully, her voice almost as clear as if she had been awake. "Leave me alone!" Her voice cracked at the end of _alone_, and Dean could see tears start falling down her sleeping face. "No, stop, just stop." Her words were weaker, now coming out as exhausted sobs, and Dean decided he couldn't take it anymore. He stood, ready to try to wake her up.

Except Jack beat him to it.

He'd woken up and was standing by Sophie's bed, looking horribly guilt ridden. Dean had been so fixated on Sophie's distress that he hadn't even seen the kid get up. "Wake up, S," Jack said softly and tiredly, sitting down next to her head, gently placing a hand on her shoulder. "C'mon, just wake up so we can talk about how you left me in the dark about this whole crazy monster thing."

The tears fell more heavily down her face. "No!" she sobbed. "Stop, just stop."

"S, please, wake up!" Jack said more forcefully, shaking her shoulder. "It's a nightmare! It's not real, just wake up!"

"Kid," Dean growled, not willing to entertain the teenager's fruitless pleas anymore, "back off."

Jack didn't listen. "S, c'mon, it's me, Jack. It's just me."

And then Sophie's eyes flew open, her chest heaving up and down. Dean could see the look of relief on Jack's face, and even he had to admit he felt better with Sophie being awake instead of experiencing whatever awful nightmare she'd been dreaming. "Hey, S," Jack said with a sad grin.

And then Sophie screamed.

Jack jumped back in surprise as Sophie quickly scrambled away from him, taking a majority of her sheets with her. Dean was unable to react quickly enough before she tumbled off of the other side of the bed, landing in a heap of limbs tangled up in bedding.

Dean immediately rushed over to her and knelt down in front of her. "Soph?"

She lifted her head, her tear-filled eyes staring at him in terror. He could tell a part of her was still stuck in the dream. Slowly, so as to not startle her, he placed both his hands on her shoulders. "That's really Jack over there," he said quietly, trying his best to sound calm and nonthreatening. "We exorcised the demon in him. That's not the same thing that hurt you, I promise. You're safe now, okay? You're safe."

Sophie's breathing started to slow down to a regular pace, and the crazed light in her eyes seem to slowly be extinguishing. "There's no demon?"

"No demon," Dean affirmed.

She nodded, and then sniffled. "So that's it, then," she groaned. "I'm a mental patient now."

Dean couldn't help but crack a grin. "Nope," he said, gently rubbing her shoulders in a comforting motion. "Just a little traumatized. But you're a Winchester, you know, and we've sort of got a monopoly on trauma. This isn't our first rodeo. We'll get through this."

She found that it was hard for her to speak, so she just gave him a grateful, albeit it a slightly watery, grin. "I hope so," she said meekly.

"We will," he assured her.

She sat back and took a deep breath. Then her eyes widened. "Oh my God. Jack."

She immediately bolted upright, and she tried to spring to her feet. On her way up, however, her legs got knotted in the sheets and she tripped and fell back, landing flat on her butt. Grumbling, she disentangled herself from the bedding and stood back up.

Her eyes met Jack's. The only thing separating them was the motel bed, but Sophie felt a chasm between them that had never existed before. She opened her mouth. "Jack…."

And then at the same time, they both said, "I'm sorry."

"No," Jack snapped right after. "What the hell are you apologizing for? I'm not the one who almost died today."

"Actually, you kind of are," Sophie said. "I mean, we both are. A lot of people who get possessed by a demon don't come out of that alive."

"You know what I mean," he said.

Sophie turned to look at Dean. "Can Jack and I…take a walk? We need to talk."

Dean shook his head. "Hell no. We've fortified this room, and right now it's the safest place for you. There's no way you can just take a stroll down the street right now."

Disappointment fell across Sophie's face, and Sam stepped up. "Dean and I can stand outside for a while," he said. Dean turned to Sam, an indignant look on his face, and Sam immediately defended himself. "Nothing's going to get in if we're standing right outside the door, Dean. C'mon, it's the least we owe them."

Dean didn't look happy about it, but he grudgingly nodded. "You two have ten minutes," he said, and then he looked carefully at Jack. "You should know that nothing physical can be done in ten minutes that will be worth it in the end."

"Oh my God!" Sophie exclaimed in embarrassment. "You can't say stuff like that!"

"I can, I did, and I will continue to," Dean said matter-of-factly. "Any roof that you are under is a fornication-free zone, _capiche_?"

Jack clearly was trying to hold back a laugh, and Sophie's face blushed red. "You're so…," she sputtered.

Dean looked satisfied. "I think I've made my point. C'mon, Sammy," he said, and Sam rolled his eyes as they walked out of the motel room, the door shutting behind him.

Sophie turned to look at Jack, the blush gradually fading from her cheeks. "He's the worst sometimes," she grumbled.

"He cares about you," Jack said. "Like, a lot. It's actually kind of surprising, because hearing you talk about him sometimes…. He just sounded like a hardass."

"He kind of is," she admitted. "But he's…."

"He's your dad," Jack said simply. "I get it."

Sophie studied him for a moment. "So you know everything now. About demons and…and the real world."

Jack gave a little laugh. "Yeah. Now I get why you flew though those _Supernatural_ books. You sort of opened a family time capsule, there."

"Yeah," she said, looking at him closely. After a moment, she said hesitantly, "You seem…normal."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

She shrugged. "You haven't fainted or started hyperventilating or called me a crazy psychopath."

A grin crept onto his face. "Well, when I woke up I thought I was still in a dream, so it's not like I wasn't a little thrown," he said. "But you know me. Reality is so boring. It's exciting to know something else is out there."

"Exciting?" Sophie repeated incredulously. "Try horrifying."

"Maybe a bit of both," he said.

"So you're not mad at me for not telling you about anything?" Sophie asked.

"Of course not," Jack said, grinning at her, his eyes practically shining. "I wouldn't have told you either. Clearly, it's a lot easier and a lot safer for someone to not know about it all. But I mean…now I'm here. You can talk to me about things. I get to be your confidant."

Sophie was suddenly hyperaware of how close they were. Had they been that close a minute before? When she looked up she could see a new light in Jack's dark blue eyes, a light filled with mischief and excitement. "My confidant," she repeated, her voice a little unsteady.

"Sounds kind of clandestine, doesn't it?" he asked, and she didn't miss how his voice had lowered. She felt his fingertips slowly touch her wrist, and she looked down and watched as her hand and his slowly intertwined.

She looked back up at him, her heart beating so loud she could feel it in her ears. "They'll be back in soon."

His lips twitched into a grin. "We have time."

"Aren't you afraid of my dad?"

"Oh yeah. He scares the living hell out of me. Literally," Jack said, grinning, his other hand slowly reaching up to gently play with one of Sophie's loose curls. "Are you going to keep taking up what little time we have left talking in circles and asking me questions you already know the answer to, or are you going to let me kiss you?"

Sophie tilted her head up, her lips parted in surprise. Jack just let out a small laugh and shook his head in amusement. Next thing she knew, the hand that had been playing with her hair was cupping her face, and in a moment that seemed suspended in time and space, Jack's lips gently fell onto hers.

She couldn't stop the memories of Ryan and his hands all over her body that flooded into her mind, but for some reason something about Jack seemed to be wiping them away. Slowly, she lifted her arms up to knot around his neck, pulling him closer to her. In his elation that she seemed to be reciprocating his gesture, he twined his arms around her waist and lifted her up, and she found that kissing him at an angle where her head was above his and her feet were lifted clear off the ground made her feel like a part of her soul was flying.

Jack couldn't protect her from demons or vampires or werewolves or anything else supernatural; he couldn't even really protect her from the school bully. Some things she had to protect herself from, and that was just life. But still, he made her feel safe, and steady, and worthy of a bit of normalcy.

Jack's fingers had knotted into her hair and she had begun to play with the hair on the back of his neck, their kiss becoming heated after the initial shock, when there came a knock on the door. Dean's loud voice emanated through. "I just want you two know that you have thirty _very short _seconds until we're back inside."

That effectively broke their kiss, leaving them laughing breathlessly. Jack lowered Sophie back to the ground, and she unwound her arms from his neck. He gently let his hands fall away from her head, stuffing them into his pockets and looking down at her, eyes bright and lips curved into one of his impossibly comfortable grins. "So," he said after a moment.

"So," Sophie responded, crossing her arms over her chest and taking a small step back from him, grinning the whole time.

"Okay!" boomed Dean's voice. "We're coming in."

Jack and Sophie reflexively took another step apart from each other as the door opened and Sam and Dean made their way back in. Sam seemed totally casual, going back into the fridge and grabbing a water bottle out of it. Dean, however, stared at them with a look of suspicion on his face. "Did you get what you wanted from each other?" he finally asked.

Jack and Sophie both reflexively glanced at each other out of the corner of their eyes, and Sophie couldn't help but let out a poorly suppressed laugh. Jack, taken by surprise by it, couldn't help but follow suit.

As Sam sat down at the table, amused and content to watch the scene unfold in front of him, Dean looked back and forth between Sophie and Jack for the longest time, and then he narrowed his eyes.

"You," he barked at Jack. "You're in that bed," he continued as he pointed at the one Jack had slept a few hours in. "And you," he snapped at Sophie. "You're in your bed." He then grabbed a pillow from Jack's bed and his jacket off the back of one of the chairs next to Sam, and then he got down on the floor between the two beds. "And this is my bed. I will know if one of you gets up or moves or so much as blinks in the other's direction, got it?"

"Yeah, because if I was going to be sleeping with someone it'd be in a room with my dad and my uncle there with me," Sophie grumbled, climbing up into her bed. "Would you just butt out of my personal life for once?"

"No can do, sweetheart," Dean said, settling down onto the uncomfortable floor. Then he raised his voice a bit. "Hey, Sam, wake me up in two hours so we can switch and have enough mental energy to get home in the morning, would you?"

"Sure, Dean, whatever."

"You're unbelievable," Sophie grumbled, turning over under the covers and curling up into a ball. "I literally almost die and you're still more concerned about me and my nonexistent sex life."

"Hey, you didn't die, and trust me, I'm more than grateful for that," Dean defended. "So I'm back to worrying about the stuff I can control."

Sophie rolled back over. "You can_not _control—"

"Children," Sam snapped from over at the table. "Stop arguing and go to sleep."

Both of them grumbled under their breath, but after a few moments of silence, all three of them had fallen into a deep sleep.

**Thanks for reading! Just a heads up, I will try my very hardest to update on schedule next Saturday, but this is my last week of classes before finals, and I'm super busy! I might not be quite as punctual as usual, but I sure will try!**

**Thanks again! Your reviews and follows and favorites always inspire me to keep writing the three Winchesters' story! ~ Lacey :)**


	41. Chapter 41: Into The Batcave

_Chapter 41: Into the Batcave_

The next morning when Sophie woke up, she felt like she'd been hit by a truck.

She woke up groaning, sitting up in bed and rubbing her eyes. Light was shining through the window, falling straight across her face. She tried to smooth down her hair, which was out of control, and when she opened her eyes and looked to her left, she saw that Jack wasn't in his bed.

"Morning, sunshine."

Dean's voice cut through her fuzzy thoughts and brought her down to reality. He was sitting at the table, drinking a cup of coffee out of a Styrofoam cup and reading a newspaper.

"I feel like I just got tackled by a linebacker," she groaned.

"If only," Dean remarked, offering her a wistful grin. "Cas' grace healed you of the worst injuries, but he'd been using a lot of angel mojo flying back and forth trying to find you. He might not have been able to pump you full of enough grace to heal every single little bump or bruise."

She nodded, rubbing the back of her neck. "Guess I'll just say I'm grateful to be alive and be done with it," she sighed. "Where're Sam and Jack?"

"Sam took Jack to go fuel up the car and get some decent coffee for the ride back, because this garbage they had in the lobby is toxic." At Sophie's stricken look, Dean rolled his eyes. "Trust me, Sam's not going to go hard on him. You're just lucky it wasn't me taking him out for a little morning stroll."

"Be nice to him," Sophie pleaded.

The corner of Dean's mouth twitched upward. "Hey, if it makes you feel any better, I don't hate him. Kid's got heart, I'll give him that."

She didn't respond, just took the quiet moment to redo her ponytail. The curls Jamie had put in it the night before had all but fallen out, and it was almost back to its usual gentle curliness. Sophie was just using the time to collect her thoughts, because there was something she really wanted to say to Dean and didn't know how.

"Can I talk to you about something?" she blurted out.

He looked up at her, eyes focused and waiting. "Always, Soph," he finally said.

She bit her lip. "So…you know, back when I, you know, just escaped death, I sort of…. I mean, I called you Dad, and I don't…I mean, I know you said it's okay, but I don't…not if you don't…." She trailed, her face blushing like crazy, feeling embarrassed for even bringing it up. Because yes, she wanted more than anything to be able to call someone—no, not someone, _Dean_—Dad, but she also didn't want to do that if it wasn't something he wanted.

His first response was to grin, one of the grins that was obviously more to himself than to anyone else. He set his paper down on the table and got up, crossing the room and sitting on the end of Sophie's bed. "I'm not going to lie and say I ever thought I'd want you calling me that," he started, looking straight at her. Sophie liked that about Dean—there was never any bull when it came to him. "I mean, we barely knew each other, and it was sort of late in the game to play it that way. But I know when I look at you now, I don't see some poor little girl in danger that I took in to keep away from harm. I see my daughter. And I think I'm right in saying that you see me as your dad."

"I do," Sophie replied softly.

Dean nodded, grinning. "So that's that," he said, ruffling her hair affectionately.

"Oh my God, _Dad_, I just finished making my hair look good again," she snapped in mock irritation.

"Nah, I improved it, trust me," Dean promised, thinking that he could really get used to her calling him Dad. "By the way, do you have any burning desire to start using Uncle Sam, because I'm not sure I can hear that every day and not laugh."

Sophie laughed. "No, I think I'm good calling Sam just Sam. He's my uncle, but he feels more like…like…I don't know, like an older brother-slash-co-father, kind of. I always associate uncles with family members you see a few times a year during holidays and get money from on birthdays, and Sam's sort of more important to me than that."

Dean couldn't have explained it, but hearing that Sam was important to Sophie sent a rush of warmth through his chest, and he smiled at her. "Good to hear," he said. Then he straightened up, his face taking on a slightly more serious look. "Now, we should talk about your boyfriend."

Sophie scowled. "For the trillionth time, we aren't—"

"Did you or did you not kiss him last night during the ten minutes Sam and I were outside?"

Sophie fully intended to lie to him, but her blush gave her away. "We…no…."

"Case in point," Dean remarked.

"No, not case in point," Sophie shot back. "It was kind of a holy-crap-I'm-somehow-not-dead-and-you-were-just-possessed-by-a-freaking-demon kiss, not a maybe-we-should-date kiss. And he is _definitely _not my boyfriend now."

"He calls you 'S,'" Dean said. "He has a nickname for you. That's pretty relationship-y to me."

"Well, we're not, so could you quit saying we are?" she groaned.

"I'm just saying, you guys better leave the entire middle seat empty on the ride back today," he warned, getting up off the bed.

"Well, damn, because we were definitely planning on doing it in the back of the Impala while you guys were driving," Sophie grumbled sarcastically. "Because _that's_ romantic."

Dean shrugged, getting up off the bed and returning to his cup of coffee. "Impala sex _is_ romantic," he argued.

Sophie made a disgusted sound. "Oh my God, thanks for that mental image. I have to sit there for three hours today!"

"You're the one who brought it up," Dean defended.

Sophie just made a gagging sound and slid off of the bed, looking down at her clothes, which still consisted of Dean's oversized T-shirt and the sweatpants Cas had brought her. "Oh, no," she groaned. "I don't have anything else to wear besides this."

"You look fine," Dean remarked. "Better than that outfit you had on last night, at least."

Sophie narrowed her eyes. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm just saying, the skirt was short, the shirt was tight," Dean said. "Not exactly sixteen-year-old appropriate."

Sophie knew she should react indignantly and chatter on about how sixteen was a completely acceptable age to wear whatever the hell she wanted, but her mind floated to Ryan's comment. _You are a hell of a lot sexier up close and wearing that skirt than you are with your nose in a book_. Maybe the skirt _was _too short, the shirt _was _too tight. "Maybe you're right," she finally said. "Maybe if I'd worn something more like this," she said, gesturing towards her baggy, mismatched clothes, "Ryan wouldn't have given me a second look."

At that, Dean's eyes turned a little darker and a little sadder. "No, Soph," he said. "That's not what I was trying to say."

Sophie sat back down on the bed, arms crossed and head down. She was suddenly back in that dark room, and Ryan was holding her down and she was sure that she was going to lose that fight. "Doesn't matter," she said, closing her eyes, trying to banish the images from her head. "It's true."

How could the memories be so clear if she'd had so much of a drug in her system? Maybe when Taylor had cured her of the drug's effects, it had kept the memories intact.

Sophie wished it hadn't.

She heard Dean cross the room and crouch down in front of her. "Soph," he said in a commanding voice. "Sophie, look at me."

She opened her eyes, surprised to find that tears stung them. She felt weak and vulnerable, something she hated feeling around Dean. "Whatever you say won't change the fact that I tried to be someone that I'm not for a night, and I learned my lesson."

Dean's jaw was taut, his eyes hard and angry as they stared into Sophie's. "I'm only going to say this once, Sophie, so listen up." She lifted her head, blinking once. "You were not trying to be someone you're not—you were being a sixteen-year-old high school girl at a party with a lot of people who are your friends. You did not ask for Ryan to drug you or do anything to you—he did that on his own, and it was his own choice that cost him his life. I don't care if you were strutting in front of him in lingerie, what he did was cowardly, low, unforgivable, and _not your fault_. At all."

Sophie wiped her tears away before they could start falling down her face. "I tried to fight him off, you know," she said in almost a whisper. "I mean, everything looked like it was spinning and I…I couldn't really move… but I managed to grab a lamp off the bedside table and smash it in his head. It didn't help in the long run, but…. I just…didn't want to look you in the eye and say I didn't put up a fight."

Dean shook his head. "I already know you're a fighter, Sophie. I've known that since the day I first met you. And I could never think less than the absolute best of you, regardless of the circumstances, okay? Even if you hadn't been able to fight back. I…," he trailed, and then he took a deep breath. "Look, you're important to me, kiddo. You don't need to keep proving to me that you're worth keeping around, because you don't just keep family around; you _need_ them around. And I need you around, okay?"

Sophie gave him a watery grin. "Okay."

"Good," Dean said, giving her knee a quick squeeze before standing back up. "Now get up and get ready before we have another chick flick moment, I don't think I can stomach any more than this in one morning."

Sophie grinned. "Fine. But we need to stop by a Target or something on the way back, because I don't have any shoes."

Dean shook his head. "No way. I've learned my lesson with you and Targets. That's five hundred dollars I will never get back."

"I _needed _the yellow comforter," Sophie reasoned.

"And did you also need the headphones with pictures of giraffes on them?"

"Yes."

"The _Frozen _coffee mug?"

"It had Olaf on it," she said, as if that explained everything.

Dean just shook his head, grinning. "Thank God you're alive, kiddo," he said.

Sophie grinned at him, that all too familiar half-grin filled with affection and tenderness. "The world would have been a little dull and boring without me, wouldn't it?"

He heaved a big sigh, trying to imagine a world without Sophie and failing to conjure it. "You have no idea."

* * *

They arrived back in Lebanon around two in the afternoon. The ride back hadn't been as awkward as Sophie had feared, mainly because Dean had pretty much turned up his music to an obnoxious volume, the universal "I don't feel like talking" sign. Sophie had mouthed her apologies to Jack over the sound of the Rolling Stones, and he had just shrugged and grinned back at her.

Still, the mostly conversation-less drive back to Lebanon wasn't too uncomfortable, and by the time they'd made it back to the bunker, Sophie was starting to feel an inkling of hope that maybe, just maybe, Dean wouldn't forever hate Jack.

When they pulled up to the bunker and parked the car, Jack looked out of the window in confusion. "What are we doing here?"

Sophie turned to him, grinning. "This is home."

Jack just stared at the outside of the bunker. "Home?"

"Yep," Sophie said. "It looks kinda scary and intimidating on the outside, but the inside is super cool."

"Like me," Dean interjected.

"That's…a surprisingly accurate analogy," Sophie admitted before opening her door.

"Hold up," Dean said before she stepped out. She froze, halfway out the door. "You're okay with letting him in?"

Sophie shrugged. "I mean, he could probably use a shower and a change of clothes before he goes back home and faces whatever story Cas concocted as a cover."

Dean shook his head. "No, Soph, that's not what I meant."

She knew what he had meant. He wanted to know if it was okay with her that Jack knew about the supernatural world, that he be familiar with all of the creepy crawlies in the world and things that go bump in the night. He wanted to know if it was okay with her that a friend she'd been making separate from the hunter's life was suddenly drawn into it.

And of course, she had her worries, but she was more than okay with it. Finally, she'd have someone on her level that she could talk to about certain things that she couldn't usually talk about. So she just nodded. "I'm definitely okay with it."

Dean didn't question it, just nodded and unlocked the car. "Alright, then. Into the Batcave we go."

**Hey y'all! So I somehow managed to get up another chapter during these few days studying for finals and writing final research papers and whatnot. I'm proud I managed to post a chapter, but it's not as long as I usually shoot for-sorry about that. To compensate, the next chapter is going to be super long compared to what I usually post. Probably one of my longest ever, actually. Either way, I hope you liked, and as always, thanks for reading and leaving your feedback in reviews! ~ Lacey :)**


	42. Chapter 42: Too Soon

_Chapter 42: Too Soon_

The story that Cas had concocted for what had happened at the Bash was, to everyone's surprise, brilliant.

The body of Ryan Scott had been found inside of his car, which was wrapped around a telephone pole a few miles away from the Bash. His BAC had been a .12, which Sophie had a feeling wasn't a factor that Cas had needed to tamper with. His body was so contorted and broken that it had taken the authorities a while to ID him. It was on the front page of every newspaper within a hundred mile radius: _Promising Duke Recruit Killed in Drunk Driving Accident. _

Nothing about him being found dead in the room where he'd tried to rape a girl that he'd drugged. Nothing about the extraordinarily weird circumstances surrounding his death.

Because there were none. Cas had made sure of that.

Sophie didn't really want to know how he'd managed to do that.

As for Sophie and Jack, Cas had also managed to find a good story to explain where they had disappeared to. The new version of the story was so generic and simple that it was painfully believable: Sophie had one too many drinks, and when Jack came back after helping out Harry with Jamie and found her, he decided to take her back home, where her father insisted that Jack spend the night because of how late it was. He would've called everyone to tell him where he was, but there was no service anywhere.

It wasn't perfect, but everyone that mattered—Jack's parents, Jamie, Harry—bought it, and if it came down to it, the school and the police would buy it, and that's all that mattered.

It had taken Sophie about a week to get over what had happened that night, and even then she doubted she'd ever _really _be over it. But that first week was rough for her. She had awful nightmares every night, and more than once she'd wake up to Sam or Dean peering in through the door making sure that everything was okay and that it really was just a dream.

And the dreams were always different. Some of them were about Ryan and what he'd done, but most of them were about Taylor, possessing Jack, or sometimes possessing other people she cared about. Jamie, Harry, Cas, Sam. Dean. And always, they hurt her. Sophie dreaded going to sleep, and she was exhausted during the day.

But eventually, the intensity of her nightmares lessened. Slowly, she recovered.

Jack helped a lot. He came over a few times, in between his shifts at his summer job at Busboys and Brew, and he and Sophie would sit down together and just talk. Nothing more—just conversations, usually heavily one-sided as Jack filled the silence Sophie wasn't quite ready to fill, but he didn't seem to mind. His favorite thing to talk about was the bunker—the whole place mystified him, and he spent every second he didn't spend talking with her scouring the place and learning more about the supernatural world. Sophie didn't know how he was so okay with everything, especially after being possessed by a demon, but somehow he was, and she decided to just consider it a blessing.

Once that week passed, Sophie was starting to think that she'd be okay; that she would finally be able to get back on board with her life before the Bash. And she was close to it, too.

But then she got the phone call.

It had been the day after her first full night's sleep devoid of all nightmares. She had felt more well-rested than she had in days, and Sam and Dean had noticed it when she woke up. Dean had been putting on a tough, comforting front whenever he tried to help Sophie through her nightmares or down moments during the day, but inside it was eating at him. He was angry that his life brought this on her, angry that he couldn't protect her from Ryan, angry that they were still miles and miles away from trying to figure out a solution to the whole sold-his-soul-to-Beelzebub problem that had started this mess and almost cost Sophie her life.

Sam had gone back to Lincoln, Nebraska the day after they'd brought Sophie home so that he could speak with the professor who had studied Beelzebub, but he didn't have any information that Sam and Dean didn't already know. So they were back to square one, and Sophie was having a rough time, and things had felt pretty dark and hopeless.

But that day, Sophie had been feeling better, and because she had woken up with a grin on her face and her hair brushed and wearing something other than pajamas as she ate breakfast and drank her coffee, Sam and Dean had been in better moods, too. It was hard for their spirits not to lift as they listened to her humming Led Zeppelin's "No Quarter" as she washed her dishes, the song off the CD that Dean had made for her that she seemed to like the most. It gave them hope, seeing her bounce back the way that she was. If she could come back from a near-death experience like that, she clearly was tough enough for the life of a hunter's daughter.

Sam had gone out to grab some more groceries and Dean had been down in the garage, trying to fix a kink in the Impala. Sophie had been surfing the web, looking up the release date of the sequel to a book she had recently read and loved, when she saw the screen of her phone light up. She recognized the number as Lebanon Central's, and her eyebrows lifted in surprise. Why would the school be calling her? School had been out for a week.

Curious, Sophie pressed the answer button and tentatively said, "Hello?"

"Hi, is Sophie around?" a male voice said into the phone.

"This is she."

"Ah, Sophie! This is Principal Grayling. I hope you've had a good start to your summer vacation."

Sophie couldn't help but let some of her surprise seep through into her voice. "Yes, it's been good."

"Good, good," he said. He cleared his throat. "Are you in town this week?"

Now Sophie was truly confused. "Um…yes, I am. Why?"

He cleared his throat again. "I'm sure you've heard about the tragic death of Ryan Scott last Saturday. He was the president of student government's executive board, so I'm sure you knew him through the meetings you had each week."

Sophie felt her mood darken immediately at the mention of Ryan. She'd been trying more than anything to push him to the back of her mind. Dealing with what Taylor had done to her was pretty straightforward—she had been attacked and almost killed by a demonic creature, and she was a little scarred from that, but she could come back and one day, she could take Taylor out with all of the justification in the world. Dealing with what Ryan had done to her, especially when he'd been brutally murdered, was not so simple. It was difficult to balance her feelings of hatred and guilt.

"Yes, I heard," she said, trying not to sound too curt. "It's awful."

"It is," he agreed. "I don't know if you know, but there's going to be a memorial held at the church he attended with his family, St. Paul's Episcopal."

Sophie wasn't quite sure where this was going. "No, I hadn't heard anything about that. I was never close with Ryan or his family."

"Completely understandable," Principal Grayling quickly said. "And actually, preferable for why I'm calling. Lebanon Central would like to be represented among those giving small eulogies in Ryan's memory, and we have a prepared statement that we want a student to read at the memorial. Sophie, I've talked to some of the members of administration here, and we think that, out of those considered, you would be the best to give the eulogy."

Sophie felt like she heard the words, but couldn't process them. Was this some sort of cosmic joke?

She tried to keep her voice even as she replied. "Why?"

"We wanted a member of student government to be the one chosen, obviously," he explained. "The exec board is gone for a week-long conference, and the senior, junior, and freshmen class presidents are all either on vacation with their families or touring college campuses in preparation for college applications next fall. And…," Principal Grayling let out an exhausted sigh. "And we're looking for someone who wasn't in attendance at the party Ryan was at when the authorities showed up to investigate his death, and you are one of the very few people who were not on that list of names."

_But I was at the party when he died_, Sophie wanted to say, but then she stopped herself. She couldn't contradict the story Cas had concocted for her, or else Grayling would ask more questions, which could lead to the police asking more questions, which could lead to her whole life at Lebanon blowing up. She swallowed. "I'm really…flattered to have been chosen, but I'm really sorry Principal Grayling, I just don't think it'd be appropriate for me to stand up and talk in front of Ryan's friends and family when I wasn't all that close with him."

Grayling released a huge sigh, and Sophie knew what was coming next. "I don't want to beg, Sophie, but I really need you to step up and help us out with this one. You are, in truth, one of the handful of people we can choose from, and it's important that it be someone as well-spoken and responsible as you. And, to be frank, we're out of options. It seems like the whole school was at that party. And we really don't want to be unrepresented at the memorial for one of your peers."

Sophie felt cornered, and she could feel all of her assertiveness disappear as the submissive part of her, the part of her that had dominated her personality when she had lived under her stepfather Steve's roof, came up to the surface. Before she could stop herself, she found herself replying, "I…I can read it. But I don't think I can write it."

"That's perfect!" Principal Grayling exclaimed, sounding more relieved than Sophie expected him, too. Clearly, this had been a struggle for him to organize. "I'll send you an email containing the school's statement and the info about the memorial ASAP. It's tomorrow night at the church at six o'clock."

"Uh huh," she replied, still a little dazed that she had actually accepted the gig.

"Thanks again, Sophie. Lebanon Central owes you one."

He hung up, and Sophie took the phone away from her ear, staring at it in shock, as if she'd never seen a phone in her entire life.

What had just happened?

She barely had time to set the phone back down on the table when, with a flourishing of wings, Cas appeared across the table from her. She was still so shocked by her conversation with Principal Grayling that she barely even flinched.

Cas eyed her with sharp eyes. "What's wrong, little lion?"

Sophie lifted her head to look at him. "How'd you know something was wrong?"

"I could feel your distress acutely, like a prayer." He sighed. "Actually, I've felt your distress for the past week, but I couldn't think of a way to alleviate it, so I kept my distance. But I've been keeping a keen ear to your mind, and you just elicited a piercing cry for help. So I came here, because while I cannot pinpoint your location specifically, I had a feeling you'd be here."

"Did I really elicit a piercing cry for help?" she asked, feeling almost lightheaded. "I didn't know I did."

"Yes, well, the subconscious of humans is often much more vocal than the conscious. Now tell me, what is wrong?"

Sophie took a deep breath. "I think…I think I just agreed to give a eulogy for Ryan at his memorial."

Cas looked rightfully shocked, and so she explained to him what had transpired over the course of her conversation with Grayling. He looked at her pityingly, and when she finished, his sad eyes met hers. "I am sorry you have to do that, Sophie."

"Have to do what?"

Sophie and Cas both turned their heads to see Dean walking in, a plate with a sandwich on top of it in his hands. He sat down at the table next to Cas and took the sandwich in his hands before taking a large bite out of it, looking between Cas and Sophie expectantly for an answer.

Cas opened his mouth to speak, and Sophie reflexively cut him off. "I have to return the iPad that student government let me borrow for the school year. Which means I'm going to lose all of my progress on Trivia Crack."

Dean grinned, missing the pointed look that Cas gave Sophie, which she ignored. "It's for the best, kiddo, I've heard app addiction is a real problem."

"Yeah, definitely," Sophie said, giving Cas a quick _don't you dare say a word_ look before standing up and grabbing her laptop and phone. "I think I'm going to go out. Maybe go see Jack."

Dean looked up in surprise. Sophie hadn't left the bunker once since they'd gotten back from Lincoln, and he hadn't really pushed her to leave. "Really?"

"Yeah," she said. "And don't worry, I've got all sorts of demon-killing paraphernalia in my car, and I'm ready in case I get jumped in between here and Jack's house. No worries."

Dean nodded. "It'll be good for you to out and see something other than the inside of the Batcave. Just call when you get to Jack's and if you stay long, check in every hour."

"Will do," she said. She quickly dumped her laptop in her room, grabbed her car keys, and made her way to her car.

Once she was gone, Cas turned to Dean. "Are you blind?"

"I'll have you know I have impeccable eyesight," Dean defended. "Why do you ask?"

"She just lied to your face, Dean."

At that, Dean assumed a very confused look, and he put his sandwich down. "About what? Going to see Jack?"

"No," Cas said, shaking his head. "About what she had to do. She doesn't need to return anything to the school."

Now Dean looked irritated. "Just spit it out, Cas, what's going on?"

"The principal of her school just called and more or less cornered her into giving a eulogy tomorrow for the boy who attacked her at that party."

At that, Dean's expression darkened, and he gave Cas a withering glare. "What?"

"You heard me, Dean. Tomorrow she's going to walk into that boy's memorial and give a speech in front of his grieving family and friends about how he was an upstanding citizen who died too soon."

"He did die too soon," Dean cut in. "He died before I could kill him."

"You know what I mean."

"I do," Dean snapped. "She can't do his eulogy. That's just cruel. And she was just coming out of her slump."

Cas sighed. "She is very distressed about it. I can feel her anxiety from here. It's clouding her mind."

Dean wanted to hit something, and then he dug his phone out of his pocket. "I'm calling that asshole principal of hers and telling him we're out of town and she won't make it."

Cas shook his head. "She already told him that she was available this week."

That only made Dean more pissed off. Clearly, the principal had wanted to make sure he got Sophie to say yes. In the back of his mind, he knew it wasn't the man's fault—he didn't know what had happened between Ryan and Sophie, he only knew that Sophie was one of the most well-spoken and responsible students at his school. But still. "Well then, as her father, I'll just say there ain't no way in hell she's doing it, flat out."

Cas shook his head. "You can't do that without explaining to him why, and that would ruin her cover for that night. And if the principal starts asking questions, the police will get involved, and if that happens then Sophie's life here in Lebanon as a regular high school student is over."

"I don't give a damn," Dean growled. "We'll sign her up for online classes, it'd be safer that way anyway."

Cas gave Dean a stern look. "You might not care, but Sophie clearly does. Otherwise she wouldn't have agreed to it in the first place."

Dean glared at Cas. "She's not doing it. Go up on a stage and say a bunch of nice crap about the kid who almost…." Cas saw a devastated look fall over his face for a brief moment, and then he straightened back up. "No. She's not doing it."

Cas looked annoyed. "Dean, I didn't tell you this so that you could go and make decisions for Sophie. She's responsible enough to do that for herself. I told you so that you could support her and be there for her, because that eulogy isn't going to be easy. But she's decided to do it. If she decides to back out of it, fine. But she's old enough to make her own choices. I mean, you were practically your age when you made her."

"That," Dean pointed out, "definitely does not prove that you can make your own choices at that age."

"I suppose," Cas admitted. "But still. Be there for her, Dean. Just be there for her. No more, no less."

Dean let out a breath and was quiet for a moment. "She was just getting back to normal, too, Cas," he finally said, a little helplessly.

"She's strong, Dean," Cas said, and something in his voice made Dean look up and pay more attention to him. "She's strong in ways I don't even understand yet. Resilient. If you could see her soul…. Believe me. This will not be the trial that breaks her."

With that, Cas disappeared, and Dean was left with a surprising chill making its way down his spine.

If this was not the trial that broke Sophie, then what was the trial that would?

* * *

The night of Ryan's memorial, it was raining.

Sophie stood outside of the church, feeling very small hiding underneath an umbrella. She was wearing a simple black dress that she'd borrowed from Jamie and black flats, her hair pulled back into a sharp ponytail. The eulogy that Principal Grayling had sent her was clasped tightly in her hand, and a part of her wanted to drop it into the growing puddle underneath her feet.

Of course it was raining, she thought. Pathetic fallacy at its finest.

She'd stayed at Jack's the night before, calming Dean's fears by assuring him she'd be staying in Jamie's room. She couldn't tell from his voice over the phone if Cas had told him about the eulogy. She usually would trust Cas to keep her secrets, but she wasn't sure if he'd keep this one.

But Dean hadn't said anything revelatory on the phone, so she assumed he knew nothing about it. Which was what she wanted, because if Dean knew she was going to this memorial, there was no way he'd let her go.

She'd told Jack everything, and he of course offered to accompany her. But she refused. For some reason, she had the overwhelming feeling that this was something she needed to do, and needed to do alone. She wasn't sure why she felt that way—maybe it was for clarity, or maybe it was for closure.

Or maybe she was just crazy.

Either way, she was committed to doing it, and standing there in the rain in front of the church, she was struck with the notion that yes, she was small in the grand scheme of things. She was just a grain of sand on the shore, a drop in the ocean. But she was strong.

She took a deep breath, bit the inside of her cheek in nervousness, and then walked inside.

The memorial was…sad. Sadder than Sophie thought it would be. She harbored an understandably deep hate for Ryan, but worse than her hate was the burning resentment that there was nothing she could do to _confront_ her hate. He was dead. She couldn't go up and scream at him and knock the crap out of him, because he was _dead_. And as friends and family and coaches made their way to the front of the church to talk about Ryan, with his inconsolable mother and father and baby brother and sister sitting in the front row, Sophie began to…mourn.

Would she ever forgive him for what he did to her? Probably not. But after going to his memorial, would she ever say that he deserved his death? Definitely not.

Sooner than she'd thought, it was her turn to go up and speak. Shakily, she stood up from her seat and silently made her way to the front of the church, the paper containing the eulogy tightly clenched in her hand. When she reached the podium, she smoothed the paper out in front of her, and she began speaking.

"For those of you who don't know me, my name is Sophie Winchester, and I'm a rising junior at Lebanon Central. I'm here on behalf of the school and to offer to Ryan's family the condolences that each member of our administration, faculty, and student body wishes it could make individually.

"Ryan was such an important part of our school. Academically, he excelled beyond his years. He was salutatorian, and headed to Duke in the fall. He pushed those around him to study hard and focus on schoolwork. He tutored freshmen in math, giving what little spare time he had to help those around him.

"Athletically, he proved himself outstanding, playing both football and baseball, but standing out above all others on the baseball field. He was the player everyone loved coaching because of his raw ability and willingness to learn and have fun.

"Socially, he was loved by everyone, and he was looked up to by all around him for his integrity and strong moral character." Her voice faltered on _integrity_, and she saw a few sad looks in the crowd. She wanted to scream that she hadn't faltered out of sadness, but that she faltered because _integrity _was not something she associated with Ryan.

But of course she couldn't say that.

"He made a true impact on our school, the kind that will last for years to come. The kind that cannot be removed after his death. We will miss Ryan so much, and we hope he rests in peace."

She looked up. The eulogy that the school had written for her to read was over, but she felt the need to add one more sentence. Right before she said it, she glanced around the church, and suddenly, her eyes zeroed in on a man sitting quietly at the back, wearing a sports coat, five o'clock shadow, and a heartbroken look on his face. Her heart dropped.

Dean.

She stared straight at him as she finished in a softer voice. "He was gone too soon, Mr. and Mrs. Scott. He didn't deserve this."

She left the podium, and as the next speaker made his way to the front she fled to the back, where she quickly made a beeline down a hall that branched off from the vestibule of the church and led to the parish center, where she found the nearest bathroom and proceeded to fling herself into the handicap stall and vomit into the toilet.

A minute later, the door to the bathroom was pushed open, and there was a soft knock on the stall. "Soph, can I come in?"

Sophie groaned in response right before throwing up again, and without waiting for any other indicator Dean pushed his way into the stall. He bent down next to Sophie, crouching and balancing on the balls of his feet, and he pulled her ponytail back with one hand and gently rubbed her back with the other. "You're okay, kiddo," he said sadly. "You're okay."

After about ten minutes she was done, and she wordlessly made her way to the sink inside of the stall and washed out her mouth. She gripped the sink shakily, and Dean slowly rose to his feet and walked over to her. "Feel any better?" he asked.

She couldn't tell if he was talking about her puking episode or the eulogy, but the answer to both was the same. She nodded, sniffed once, and then started crying.

Dean immediately pulled her into his chest, knowing her tears would leave a stain on his shirt, but not caring in the slightest. He just hated that she was in so much pain, and there was nothing he could do to help. "You're gonna get past this, Soph. I know it."

She nodded into his chest, still crying. "So Cas told you?"

"He did," Dean said.

"I hate angels," she sobbed.

The corner of Dean's mouth twitched upwards, and then another wave of tears hit Sophie and his grin fell, and he held her until her cries died down and she just stood there, hiding her face in Dean's chest and her body in his arms.

"I'm glad you came," she finally whimpered.

He gently kissed the top of her head. "Me too."

They stood there like that for a little while longer, Sophie fearful of stepping away and seeing the damage she'd wrought to Dean's clothes. But then Dean had to ask. "Did you mean it? What you said at the end?"

Sophie finally stepped back from Dean's arms, looking up at him with red, watery eyes. "Yeah," she sniffed. "I hate him. I hate him with everything I am. But he didn't deserve it."

Dean looked at her for a moment, and again he thought of Caroline. Dean had felt like he knew her pretty well, and he had known she was a beautiful person inside and out, far better of a person than he had been back when he'd known her, but judging by how her beautifully her daughter turned out, she must have been one hundred times the person Dean had thought she was. And she must have been one hell of a single mother. For the first time, Dean thought that maybe leaving her had been the dumbest thing he'd ever done.

Instead of voicing his thoughts, he just wrapped his arm around Sophie's shoulder and pulled her gently to his side.

"C'mon, kiddo. Let's get you home."

**This chapter was practically twice as long as usual, but I wanted all of the events in it to happen at one time because I wanted it to be the culmination of Sophie finally getting her closure. Alright, so now, her battling her demons from the Bash is over. We shall see what's next….**

**(Also, for those curious minds out there who have asked, this story is mapped out all the way until Sophie's high school graduation, and as of now it's the summer before her junior year, so there is much much more to come!)**

**~ Lacey :)**


	43. Chapter 43: Strongly and Rarely

_Chapter 43: Strongly and Rarely_

Sam and Dean took a few weeks off from hunting to stay with Sophie as she slowly reverted back to the cheerful, bright, tough sixteen-year-old that they knew and loved. There were certainly cases that they could have taken during that time—after all, the supernatural did not take a summer vacation—but Dean had his priorities sorted out, and Sophie was at the top of his list. He wanted to make sure everything with her was good and safe before taking off again.

One thing that had changed during that time that seemed to be for the better was Sophie's relationship with Dean. Gone was all the awkwardness of getting to know each other. After almost dying in his arms and then having him hold back her hair as she threw up into the toilet at Ryan's memorial, there were pretty much no denying that they knew each other pretty damn well.

It had also been surprisingly effortless to switch from calling him Dean to calling him Dad. The first few times it had felt a little bit different, but soon it was just the way it was. And it felt nice. Sophie liked not pretending anymore that she was okay with just a casual relationship with Dean, that she didn't want to be considered someone important to him. Now, she knew that she _was _important to him, and that knowledge made it easy for her to call him her dad.

And Dean didn't think it was strange either. In fact, he thought it was strange that he _didn't _think it was strange. He had thought that having someone call him Dad would never happen in his lifetime, and yet here he was. And it was nice.

Things with Jack were great, too. Dean had begrudgingly admitted that he liked him, and Sam was completely on board with him, so Sophie was in the clear with him. Things between them were still a little bit…undefined. They definitely weren't just friends, judging by the other times Jack had surprised her with a kiss when they weren't within shotgun distance of Dean, but neither of them had built up the courage to put a name to their relationship, so for the time being, Sophie was content to let whatever might happen…happen.

So her life was pretty great, all things considered. Everything seemed to be working out in Sophie's favor.

The only thing that wasn't great was the elephant in the room: Sam and Dean had a massive, dangerous, likely supernatural secret, and Sophie knew they were keeping her in the dark about it.

It was so obvious, and she was a little bit offended that they seemed to think she was dumb enough not to notice. But she did.

She wasn't an idiot; she knew that Taylor had targeted her at the Bash because of something Dean and Sam had gotten tangled up in—the demon had all but told her that. And she had mentioned something about Lucifer, but Sophie had already been pretty out of it then, and her memories of what exactly the demon had said were very fuzzy. She had a pretty good inkling that it had something to do with the mysterious, unresolved Raleigh case, but other than that she didn't have a clue.

She would've come right out and asked them about it, but she didn't want to take a step backwards with all the progress she'd been making with them. Not to mention whatever they were dealing with clearly worried them enough without having to deal with her being a part of it. Sophie was willing to hold out on finding out what was going on, but she still hated not knowing. It seemed to be the one barrier left to be broken down before they could finally live the most normal life that they could.

And that was what it all boiled down to. What Sophie wanted more than anything.

A chance at a life with her family that wasn't clouded by secrets and lies.

But she was starting to wonder if that kind of life even existed for people like them.

* * *

It was well into June when late one night, once Sophie was fast asleep, Sam and Dean had the conversation about going back to hunting.

"I think it's time," Dean said, a glass of whiskey in his hand as he stared into its depths. "Sophie's back on track, she's not having nightmares anymore, we haven't seen or heard of anything Beelzebub, Lucifer, or Taylor related since that night. I think now's the time."

Sam, who was sitting across from him with a beer in his hand and his laptop perched in front of him, looked conflicted. "Look, I won't disagree and say we don't need to be going back out on cases while we try to keep figuring out this whole Beelzebub situation. But…I can't help but think about what happened the last time we left her alone."

"We won't leave her alone," Dean reasoned. "She'll have Cas. You know he loves babysitting her."

"But that's not a perfect solution," Sam argued. "We had the problem last time of him not being able to find her because of the cloak, and we got incredibly lucky that he could locate her because Jack was with her. We might not get so lucky a second time."

Dean saw where Sam was coming from, and he narrowed his eyes in thought. "Well then what are we supposed to do?"

Sam was silent for a moment. "We could take turns, go out on hunts individually while the other stays back and keeps an eye on her."

Dean was shaking his head before Sam even finished his suggestion. "No way. We're not splitting up. Non-negotiable."

The younger Winchester brother just looked stumped. "What else would you suggest?"

Dean threw the hand that wasn't holding his drink in the air out of annoyance, taking a quick drink of the burning liquor. "I don't know, Sam. We temporarily give up hunting, I guess."

Judging by the look on Sam's face, he didn't seem to like that idea any more than Dean did. The idea of not hunting was so bizarre to the both of them, especially when innocent lives were always at stake. They were both quiet for a few minutes, mulling over their thoughts, trying to come up with solution.

A few minutes later, after taking a long swig from his beer, Sam looked back up. "We could take her with us."

Dean cracked a grin, like Sam had just tried to make a joke. "You're kidding, right?"

"No, I'm serious," Sam said. "Neither of us is going to feel right about leaving her here after what happened, especially since Cas keeping an eye on her isn't exactly a guarantee."

Dean's grin faded when he saw that Sam wasn't joking. "Sam, c'mon. It's not an option. Taking her with us on hunts was _exactly _what we wanted to avoid when we agreed to take her in. It's why we enrolled her in school, got Cas to watch her, got her a car…."

Sam nodded. "Yeah, but now staying here alone is way more dangerous than having her be in our sights where we can keep an eye on her. And, Dean, she's not the same person she was when he brought her back here last year. She's trained with us, she's been through hell, and she's come out of it all on top. She's ready to come along with us, at least temporarily."

Quietly, Dean absorbed what Sam said, using the moment to take another drink. After a minute, he looked back up at Sam. "Let's say I consider this. There's no way we bring her in on a hunt with us."

Seeing that he was clearly about to win this argument, Sam nodded. "Agreed. She can stay back at the motel when we're out, and we'll just make sure the place is one hundred percent anti-monster. She'd be more safe than she'd be here."

It was hard not to agree with that. Dean tried to come up with a better solution in his head, but he couldn't seem to. "Alright. I can live with this. She could probably use a bit of a summer vacation anyway. She's been cooped up here for too long."

Sam sighed. "Yeah. Who knows, this could be good for her." Then he gave a wistful grin. "Although I don't know how happy she'll be about it."

"Why wouldn't she be happy about it?" Dean asked. "She gets to road trip with her two favorite Winchesters and eat burgers and milkshakes all day, and she'll have enough time to read all the books she wants to. What's not to love?"

"Yeah," Sam said, the corner of his mouth twitching upward. "But she'll be away from Jack."

"Oh, please," Dean responded, sitting back in his chair and looking down into his now empty glass. "It's not like they'll be separated forever. We'll come back to the bunker a few times to regroup, and she's got her phone. Besides, some distance could do them good. They're always around each other now. And don't think I don't know they start kissing as soon as they know they're in the clear, I'm too smart for that."

Sam laughed. "I think some distance between them could do _you _good, Dean. But I mean, I like him. I think he's good for her. I'm just saying that I think she's going to be bummed to not see him as often as she is now."

"Too damn bad," Dean grumbled. "She's sixteen, it's not like she's going to be with him forever."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Well yeah, probably not. But that doesn't mean a lot coming from the most commitment-phobic man on earth."

Dean just grumbled unintelligibly, leaning back and wishing he could take another drink from his glass. He didn't shoot back the response he had in his mind, the one saying that he was the farthest thing from commitment-phobic a man had ever been. In fact, Dean was overcommitted, and he knew it. It wasn't that he couldn't love one woman and stay with her forever; it was that the world had taken a bazooka to his heart and left very little room in it for anyone else to make their way in. Before learning about his daughter, Sam and Cas had just about been the only two living people to occupy what little room was left in his heart. And then somehow, Sophie had slipped through the cracks.

And there just wasn't space for anyone else. It hurt too much when they inevitably left. Dean loved strongly and rarely, and it took a special kind of person to earn a spot in his damaged heart.

He wasn't commitment-phobic. He was commitment-specific. And if the right woman ever came along, he'd never leave her side. And if she never showed up, well, Dean could live with that, too.

But Dean sure as hell wasn't going to vocalize that. "She'll come with us," he finally said. "It's the safest option."

Sam nodded. "So it's settled."

"Yeah," Dean replied, standing up. "I'm going to hit the sack now. We'll talk to her tomorrow."

* * *

Sophie stared at them with a confused look. "Wait. So…you _want _me to come with you on hunts?"

She was sitting on her bed, legs crossed, a Jane Austen novel in her lap and a bemused expression stuck on her face. She had just taken a shower after a particularly grueling training session, and her wet hair was tied in a messy bun behind her head. Dean looked at her with her pink and yellow pajama pants, chick-flick-y book, and oversized neon green sleeveless shirt that she'd referred to as a "bro-tank" that had the words THIS SICK BEAT in large block print on the front. Taylor Swift music softly played in the background.

Dean was beginning to question his decision to allow Sophie to come with them. Looking at the tiny teenage girl in front of him, he was beginning to forget that when push came to shove, she packed a punch.

"Yeah," Sam said. "We've got cases we need to start investigating, but we can't let you stay here by yourself."

She crossed her arms across her chest, giving them a look that Dean was pretty sure he'd seen in the mirror himself a few times. "I'd have Cas. I wouldn't be alone."

"Cas can't track you, Soph," Dean put in. "And we can't take that chance again. Not with Taylor still out there."

Her eyes narrowed. "Just Taylor? That's all your worried about?"

Sam and Dean looked at each other, and then Sam turned back to her. "Right now, yeah. She's already proved herself pretty damn dangerous. We shouldn't take that lightly."

Sophie looked like she wanted to pursue that topic more, but she restrained herself. Finally, she let out a breath. "Would we be gone…the whole entire summer?"

"A good portion of it," Dean admitted. "But not all of it."

She looked upset, and Dean couldn't help but empathize. Firstly, she wasn't being asked to join them because that's what they really wanted; she was being asked to join them because it was the easiest way to keep an eye on her. And secondly, she was being dragged away from the only person outside of her family that had been able to keep her sane—Jack.

But Dean knew this was the best option for her. And it wasn't like he was forcing them to be apart for the sole purpose of preventing their relationship. He was fine with Sophie and Jack, as bizarre as it was for him to not want to get in the way of their feelings. Jack was good for Sophie. He grounded her, pushed her, made her sweeter and stronger.

But Jack didn't make her safer. That was Dean's job.

"Look, kiddo, I know it's not ideal," Dean said. "I know you want to be here for the summer and hang out with your friends and with Jack. I get it. But—"

"You want to keep me safe," she sighed, deflating, looking less upset and more resigned. "I get it. I mean…I want to be safe, too. It just kind of sucks."

"I know, Soph," Dean said. "But hey, you get to road trip with us. Which might be something interesting for you."

"Yeah, maybe," she said. "Listen, I'm super tired, and according to my schedule I'm supposed to run five miles tomorrow morning, so I think I'm going to go to bed now. But…I'm okay with this. Just so you know and don't think I secretly hate you."

Dean could feel a bit of relief at her words, and when he looked at Sam he saw that his brother felt the same. "I'm glad," he replied. "Sleep tight. And don't run five miles, jeez, that sounds unhealthy."

The grin that lit up her face was worth the cheap joke. "I don't know, Dad, maybe you should try it sometime. Start losing all the weight you've gained since taking a break from hunting."

"I have not gained weight," Dean responded defensively.

Sophie looked at Sam, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. "I don't know Sam, doesn't it look like he's getting a little rounder around the edges?"

Sam grinned. "Yeah, it's probably from sitting on his ass all day watching reruns of _NCIS_."

"Hey!" Dean barked. "There's a reason it's been the number one TV show in the world for five years straight!"

Sam gave him a look. "I thought that whole thing with Gabriel a few years back showed you how much you hate dumb shows like that."

"Look, being cooped up here all day is making me go stir crazy and I'm lowering my standards, okay? Sue me."

Sophie and Sam just laughed, and Dean grumpily threw his hands in the air and walked out of the room. Sam gave Sophie a smile. "You know, traveling with us might even be a little fun for you," he said.

She grinned. "It might. I just hope Dad's ready to listen to every Taylor Swift song that's been released since her 2006 album."

Dean's voice emanated from down the hall. "No way in hell, sweetheart!"

She laughed, and then sat back against her pillows. "We'll see about that," she said under her breath, grinning, and then she looked up at her uncle. "Goodnight, Sam."

"'Night, Soph," he said, still chuckling under his breath. He walked up to her bedside and placed a gentle kiss on the top of her head. "We'll see you in the morning."

He made his way to the door, glanced back at her once to see her snuggling deep into her pillows, and then he turned out the light and shut the door.

**UM THAT LAST EPISODE OF SUPERNATURAL THOUGH. [spoiler]'s death actually hit me way harder in the feels than I thought it would. Ugh. Can't Sam and Dean ever be happy? Like, for a second? That'd be cool. Tonight's episode is gonna be a doozy.**

**Also, it is summertime and while I do have work, I also have much more time to write than when I'm at school, so there will be slightly more frequent updates. There will always be an update on Saturday still, but there also might be some more regular updates coming at you on Wednesdays, so you should definitely check then to see if you get lucky. Or, you know, unlucky, if the chapter happens to suck ;)**

**Anyway, thanks as always for reading and leaving your feedback! You people rock. ~ Lacey :)**


	44. Chapter 44: Safe and Sound and Here

_Chapter 44: Safe and Sound and Here_

The night before they left for their first case, a slew of brutal killings in Jackson, Mississippi, Sophie drove to Jack's house. She wore a short sleeved gray T-shirt and a pair of faded jeans, flip flops on her feet and her keys tucked into her back pocket. Her hair was tied into a ponytail, and she spent a minute looking in the rearview mirror trying to tuck the usual flyaways behind her ear. When she did all that she could, she took a deep breath, got out of the car, and made her way to the front door.

Jack answered the door about forty-five seconds after she knocked. He was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt with a brown jacket casually tossed over it, and his hair, which had been growing longer throughout the year, had been cut shorter, almost like Dean's. One look at her and his midnight blue eyes brightened a bit as his signature easy smile crept onto his face. But tonight, it didn't look quite so easy as usual. "Hey, S."

"Hey, Jack," she said, her hands tucked casually into her pockets, mostly because she didn't know what else to do with them. "Is Jamie home?"

He shook his head. "She and my parents went to go pick up Haley and Izzy from the airport. They both are coming back from this summer program in Australia."

"Oh, cool," Sophie responded.

Jack opened the door wider. "Come in."

She stepped in, feeling the cool air hit her like a slap in the face. She briefly wondered how crappy the A.C. at the motels she, Sam, and Dean would be holing up in would be, or if they'd even have a working A.C. unit at all.

She took a breath as she heard Jack close the door behind her, and she withdrew her hands from her pockets. Slowly, she walked into the living room, listening as he followed her. "Jack," she started, feeling weak and spineless for talking to him with her back turned.

But then suddenly there was a hand on her elbow turning her around, and her lips parted in shock as suddenly Jack was there, right there, and the hand that wasn't on her elbow slipped upwards to cup the back of her neck and pull her forwards, and without even the slightest hint of a warning, his lips were on hers.

This was certainly not their first kiss. The kiss back at the motel in Lincoln had been a bit reckless, a fleeting moment of rejoicing in the fact that they were both alive and they both cared deeply about the other. And there had been kisses after that, short and experimental and few and far between.

But this was nothing like those. It wasn't reckless, it wasn't experimental, it wasn't the result of an emotionally trying night. It was charged, like some invisible force was funneling electricity through their skin, and it was desperate, longing for the connection they had now as well as the connection they wouldn't be able to keep fostering for the next couple of months. His mouth moved against hers and she didn't hesitate to wind her arms around his neck, pulling him to her as if they could somehow be closer.

She hadn't known they'd been walking backwards until they hit the edge of the couch. Before she knew it, she was lying back against the cushions and Jack was above her, his kisses pushing her deeper into the soft furniture. Her hands were curled around his back, and she was surprised to find how muscular his torso felt under her fingers. He held himself up with one arm next to her head as the other gently cupped her face, and their kiss grew deeper, hungrier, more passionate.

After what felt like an eternity, Sophie gently placed the palm of her hand on his chest and pushed slightly, signaling for him to stop. He did, kissing her lips softly one more time before leaning up and breathing deeply. Sophie smiled at him. "I didn't know this was what I'd be getting when I agreed to come over tonight," she breathed.

"Me neither," Jack admitted, his breathing slowing back to normal. "It just hit me that I might not see you again for a while, and that you were going off into the great, dangerous unknown to save the world with your dad and Sam, and I just…. I needed to know if what I felt was just some little crush or if it was…more."

Sophie started to sit up, prompting Jack to lean back and give her room to sit up next to him. She looked up into his eyes, trying to read everything she could inside of them. "So what's the verdict?"

He grinned at her, playing with a strand of her hair absentmindedly. "It's definitely more," he proclaimed. "Which sucks, because now I know I'm going to miss the hell out of you when you go."

Sophie grinned and leaned into him, loving the way his arm naturally fell across her shoulders and pulled her closer. "I'm going to miss you too," she said. "But at least this way my dad can't kill you for being with me."

"No way, c'mon, your dad loves me."

Sophie just looked up at him with a raised eyebrow.

"Okay, so maybe he doesn't _love _me," Jack amended. "But he doesn't hate me. And for him, that's kind of a big deal."

"That's true," Sophie allowed. She stared at Jack and sighed. "I hate leaving."

"No you don't," Jack said, shaking his head and offering her a wistful grin. "You're excited to see your dad and Sam do what they do. You're excited to be a part of it."

Sophie thought about what he said. "Maybe," she admitted. "But that doesn't change the fact that I'm going to miss you. And Jamie, and Harry."

"They know you need a vacation," he said. "They both can tell that something happened at the Bash, with the way you've been acting. They just want you to be okay. And if this vacation does that, then they'll be happy."

"What about you?" Sophie asked. "Will you be happy?"

Jack shifted his grip on her shoulder so that she was pulled up against him and looking straight in his eyes, on his level. He looked at her with a surprisingly serious expression, like he wanted her to hear and memorize every word he said. "I'll be happy when you're back, safe and sound and here. Got it?"

She grinned, leaning forward and gently pressing her lips to his. It was a soft, innocent kiss. A goodbye. Then she leaned back and smiled at him.

"Got it."

* * *

The next morning, Sophie was the first one up. She'd set her alarm for seven, but she'd been wide awake at six in the morning, thinking about hunting monsters and Jack and everything in between. The bags that she'd packed were leaning up against her keyboard in her room, and she looked at them for about five minutes straight before getting out of bed, pulling on a blue tank top, running shorts, and sneakers before grabbing her iPod and making her way out of the bunker and onto her usual trail.

Just being able to go on her morning runs had been a struggle the last few months. There had been the whole issue of her safety, and Sam and Dean had been understandably concerned about her being jumped on a trail in the woods by Taylor or possibly something worse. But she'd been pretty adamant about needing to get out of the bunker occasionally for some alone time, and that was something she wasn't getting a lot of anymore. So Sam and Dean had helped her map out the safest trail to run, and then Cas had gone along it and warded it to the best of his abilities. The trail itself was only two miles, so if she wanted to run anymore than that she had to just keep going around in loops, but she couldn't complain. It was better than nothing.

She took the trail faster than she usually did, feeing an enormous amount of pent up anxiety that she knew no other way to blow off. She tried to focus on the beating of her heart, on the sweat dripping from her forehead, on the lyrics from a Lil Wayne song that Dean would wipe off the face of the planet if he could.

She tried to lose herself in the exercise, but her brain was working a million miles a minute. Questions that she didn't give herself enough time to answer flew through her mind.

Would hunting with her family change her views of them? Would it change their views of her? Would she actually be safer? Would she be in more danger than ever? Would she be able to defend herself in a real world situation? Would she just be bored out of her mind sitting around in the motel every day? Would she be a burden? Would she be able to help them? Would Jack lose his feelings for her? Would she lose her feelings for Jack? Would her friendship with Jamie and Harry be damaged from the distance?

She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that before she knew it, she was back at the bunker after completing her third lap through the trail. Six miles. She'd run six miles and she still didn't feel any less anxious.

When she walked back into the bunker, Sam and Dean were both up, drinking coffee and staring at their respective newspapers in bleary-eyed silence. When she walked in they looked up, and Dean wrinkled his nose. "I hope you're showering before we leave."

Sophie stuck her tongue out at him. "Just for that, I'm not," she replied.

"How far'd you go today?" Sam asked.

"Six miles."

"Six?" Dean repeated in shock. "No way. I've never run six miles in my life."

"How are you not even slightly overweight?" Sophie asked in mild shock. "You literally live the most unhealthy lifestyle I've ever seen."

"Speaking of overweight," Dean replied sharply, "are you bringing _all _of those bags in your room with you."

"There're only three," Sophie responded, rolling her eyes.

"What the hell do you need three bags for?" Dean asked in exasperation.

"Two for clothes and one for entertainment," she explained. "And you're lucky because I had five to start with and I managed to whittle it all down to three."

"Lucky," Dean scoffed. "There's nothing lucky about lugging around three bags of your crap for months."

"Hey, you have no one to blame but yourself," Sophie retaliated. "You're the one who said I was coming with you, so you have to deal with the consequences."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Or I could just force you to choose between your four favorite pairs of jeans."

Sophie looked appalled. "You wouldn't dare!"

"Or I could make you choose just one book."

At that, she narrowed her eyes. "Could you choose just one AC/DC song to listen to for the rest of the summer?"

"Easy," Dean said. "_Back in Black_." Then he looked conflicted. "Actually, probably _Highway to Hell_." Then he glanced down. "Or maybe _Thunderstruck_."

"I rest my case," Sophie snapped. She took her hair out of her ponytail and shook out her sweaty hair. "I'm going to go take a shower."

"Make it quick," Dean said as she turned to leave. "We want to get on the road ASAP."

"I'll make it as good and long as I want to!" she replied. As she turned the corner, she grumbled under her breath. "Just one book? Honestly."

And Sam and Dean grinned as she disappeared down the hall.

* * *

The motel in Jackson was cramped and had thick blue carpet, but there was a futon, and they all had their own beds, so Sophie decided not to complain.

After a pretty savage game of Rock Paper Scissors to see who got the futon, Dean being the graceless loser, Sophie adorned her bed with a blanket she'd brought from home, her laptop, and the book she was currently reading, _Atonement_. Dean looked over at her as she made herself at home and groaned. "C'mon, Soph, really? You have to feminize our haven of manliness?"

Sophie rolled her eyes. "Hunting isn't inherently manly. There are plenty of female hunters."

"Yeah," Dean agreed. "But the way we hunt is very, very manly. And you're sort of killing the vibe."

"It's just a blanket, Dad."

"A pink blanket."

"You don't get to complain about my blanket," Sophie snapped. "My whining was minimal when you forced me to come hunting with you, and the blanket is the price you pay for that."

"Why couldn't it be blue? Or green? Or even a deep purple?"

"Would you quit being a baby and leave my blanket alone?"

"Seriously, you're the one who brought a blanket with you and you're calling _me _a baby?"

"Would you two shut up?" Sam asked in exhaustion as he looked up from the devil's trap he was creating in front of the door. "It never killed anyone to agree to disagree."

Sophie huffed. "But it's such a stupid disagreement. And I'm right."

Sam shook his head. "Too bad. Look, Dean and I need to go check something out with this case."

At that, Sophie looked at him in shock. "But it's one in the morning," she stated.

"Yep," Dean cut in. "The creepy crawlies tend to come out at night."

Sophie crossed her arms. "So you're just dumping me here and leaving?"

"Sorry, kiddo," Dean said. "If it makes you feel any better, it's nothing fun. Just checking out the last scene of the crime while nobody's around to tell us not to."

"If it's nothing fun, why can't I come?"

Dean looked annoyed. "Because I said so."

"Dad," she whined.

"Because," he amended, "sometimes the boring stuff unexpectedly turns into all hell breaking loose, and while the chance of that is very slim, I still don't want you there."

Sophie exhaled loudly. She didn't have to like that she wasn't allowed on hunts, but she did have to respect that Dean just wanted to protect her. And after what had happened back at the Bash, she couldn't help but want to be a little protected. "Fine. I'll stay here. This TV better freaking work."

Dean grinned in relief, clearly glad she wasn't going to fight him anymore on the subject. "It should. And if it doesn't, go to bed."

Sophie rolled her eyes as she grabbed her pajamas out of her bag. "Sam, tell him he can't send me to bed."

Sam looked at her apologetically. "It's one o'clock, and we have an early morning. It's not like he's sentencing you to boot camp."

"Living with you two _is _boot camp," she grumbled, grabbing her pajamas and shower stuff in her hands. "You two win. I'll shower and go to bed, and then tomorrow you better reward me with pancakes and coffee."

"That's the spirit," Dean said, shouldering his duffle bag and beckoning to Sam, who had just finished monster-proofing the room. "We'll see you in the morning. Don't leave the room, don't stay up too late. If you want food, there's a bag of pretzels in one of the bags."

"I feel so loved."

"Behave," he called as he left through the door, and Sam gave her another apologetic look before disappearing out the door behind him.

Huffing, Sophie went into the less than sanitary shower and quickly bathed before throwing on her pajamas and jumping into bed. She read her book for about an hour, and by the time it hit two thirty, Sam and Dean still hadn't returned. So she just sighed, turned out the lights, and mumbled before she finally fell asleep, "This is going to be a great summer vacation."

**400 reviews? That's crazy guys, it really is. Thank you all for reading, favoriting, following, reviewing, or all of the above. Just participating in this Supernatural journey with me means a lot. Here's to many many many more chapters of Sophie's story! ~ Lacey :)**


	45. Chapter 45: On To The Next One

_Chapter 45: On To The Next One_

The first week of hunting with Sam and Dean was relatively uneventful for Sophie. The case in Jackson was taking some time because whatever they were hunting seemed to only come out at night, which was pretty typical of monsters. Sophie mostly hung out at the hotel, reading and watching TV, but during the day she got to ride along with Sam and Dean as they traveled around the city and did their sleuthing. She went with them to the houses of people they wanted to question and locations they needed to investigate in the light of day, and she proved herself capable in the library and on the laptop when it came to research.

And Sophie had gotten pretty used to the flow when one night at around two in the morning, when she was just about to start the last chapter of her book, the door to the motel room opened and Dean and Sam stumbled in.

Or, rather, Dean stumbled in, supporting a majority of Sam's weight by himself as the younger Winchester brother winced in pain.

Immediately, Sophie bolted upright, jumping out of bed and turning on all of the lights. When she got a better look at Sam, she gasped. His shirt had been ripped to shreds, along with his back, which was pouring out blood.

"Oh my God," she said, staring as Dean yanked all the sheets off of one of the beds and helped Sam sit down on it.

"Don't worry, Sophie," Sam managed to say through gritted teeth. "It looks worse than it is."

"Yeah? Well it looks like you got mauled from behind by a wild animal."

"Close," Dean said as he rummaged through his bag for something. "Werewolf."

Sophie paled. "How can I help?"

"Don't worry about it, Sophie," Sam said, looking at her and giving her a pained grin.

"Don't be stupid," she snapped quickly. "Dad, what can I do?"

"Go grab some towels from the bathroom and soak them in warm water," Dean said after he pulled out the bag he kept his do-it-yourself stitches kit in. "Then bring them back and sit over by the couch while I stitch him up."

"No, Dean, c'mon," Sam argued. "Keep her out of it."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Sammy, there's only so much we can keep her out of."

Sophie put her hands on her hips. "I'm right here. Talking about me like I'm not is totally uncalled for."

"Towels," Dean said sharply.

She narrowed her eyes and turned, disappearing into the bathroom and reemerging soon after with two damp towels in her hands. Silently, she handed them to Dean, and then stepped back as he went to work. She watched as he used the damp towel to clean a majority of the blood off of Sam's back, revealing four relatively short but very deep gashes across his right shoulder blade. When Dean used something a little stronger that resembled whiskey to more deeply cleanse the wound, Sophie was able to see the pain on his face at seeing his younger brother hurting. Instinctively, Sophie sat down on the left side of Sam and grabbed his hand.

He looked over at her, sweat beading on his forehead, his shaggy hair falling into his eyes, and he gave her a tight grin. "You're a terrible listener."

"Yeah, but I'm an excellent hand holder," she replied swiftly, grinning gently back at him.

Sam gave a chuckle, which quickly turned into a hiss of pain as Dean started stitching him back together. "Sorry, man," Dean said as he tried to make quick but efficient work. "Maybe you shouldn't have voluntarily jumped in front of a pureblood werewolf. You know, just a suggestion."

"He was going to kill that little boy, Dean, it's not like I was going to stand by and watch," Sam replied, annoyed.

"I know, I know, I'm just messing with you. At least the bastard's dead," Dean responded.

"So wait, you guys are done now?" Sophie asked, looking up at Dean.

He was concentrating on Sam's wound, eyes narrowed in focus. "Yep, right after I finish patching up Sam here," he replied. "Then on to the next one."

He must have hit a particularly tender spot on Sam's back, because suddenly Sam's grip on her hand tightened. She held his hand tightly until it loosened, and he gave her an apologetic look. "Sorry," he said after a moment.

She shook her head, giving him a stern look. "I wasn't lying when I said I'm an excellent hand holder, so just stop talking and let me do my job."

Sam just laughed, and after a long while of sitting and letting Sam squeeze her hand, Sophie was glad when Dean was finally done and wiping his hands on one of the towels.

"There you go, Sammy. Pretty as a picture. As long as your definition of a pretty picture is ugly and bloody."

"Thanks, Dean," Sam said, and then he looked over at Sophie and lifted up their hands. "You definitely are an excellent hand holder, Soph," he said before giving her hand one more quick squeeze and letting go.

"Anytime, Sam," Sophie responded.

Dean started throwing away the bloodied towels and packing up the first aid gear. He made eye contact with Sophie as he was zipping up the bag, and he gave her a little grin. "You should go to bed, kiddo."

"But what next?" she asked expectantly. "Where are we going?"

He looked a little bit amused at her inquisitiveness. "Well, tomorrow we pig out at the best, cheapest diner in town. And then we find our next case."

Sophie nodded. "Sounds like a rough morning." She meant to say something witty after that, but suddenly she was overcome with a yawn.

"Bed," Dean said assertively.

"I won't argue," she grumbled, walking back over to her bed and crawling under the covers. "Hope you feel better, Sam," she said quietly after she had snuggled into the blankets and closed her eyes.

She didn't even stay awake long enough to hear him say, "Thank you."

* * *

"Tallahassee, Florida."

Sophie looked up from her plate, her mouth stuffed full of fluffy pancakes and syrup. "Allahaffee, Forda?" she asked with her mouth full.

She was rewarded with a disparaging look from Sam. "You've been around Dean for too long," he grumbled.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Dean asked defensively, right before swallowing the bacon he'd been chewing.

Sophie swallowed, too. "Seriously, though. What's in Tallahassee?"

Sam turned his laptop around so that Sophie and Dean could see. It was an online article with the headline "Eviscerated Janitor Found by College Student."

"What do you think? Vampire?" Dean asked.

"I'd say that's our best bet," Sam agreed.

Sophie grumpily took a sip of coffee. "I hate vampires."

"You and the rest of the world," Dean noted.

"Well, I _especially _hate them," she muttered. "Remember? I was sort of kidnapped and tortured by one the day we met? You know, when I learned about all of the monsters in the world? Not exactly the highlight of my life."

"I'm sorry, did you just say that the day you met me _wasn't_ the highlight of your life?" Dean asked, pointing an accusatory forkful of hashbrowns in her direction.

Sophie narrowed her eyes. "Are you cracking jokes about my traumatizing past?"

"We've all got a traumatizing past, sweetheart," Dean said before shoving the hashbrowns into his mouth. "I'd like to focus on the positives."

"Since when are you all little miss sunshine?" Sophie asked sharply.

"Hello? We're going to Tallahassee."

"What's so exciting about Tallahassee?"

"It's a college town," Dean said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "I _love _college towns. Great bars, hot women—"

"Are you always such a pig?"

Dean was about to retaliate when Sam cut in. "It's the summer, Dean," he said as he rolled his eyes. "College towns are dead in the summer, except for the kids who stick around to take summer classes."

"Oh," Dean said. Clearly, he hadn't thought about that. "Dammit."

Sophie rolled her eyes and took another sip of her coffee. "Yeah. So now all we're going to get when we go there is high humidity and a sunburn."

"Well it's not like you'd have been able to get anything from a college town during the school year, anyway," Dean pointed out. "You don't drink and you don't like hot women."

"How do you know that?" Sophie asked defensively, giving him a challenging look over the top of her coffee mug. "I've had a drink before."

"One drink does not a drinker make," Dean said with a false tone of wisdom.

"Well, what if I'm a lesbian?" she tried again, her green eyes bright with mischief. "What if Scarlett Johansen gets me going? What if I subscribed to the Victoria's Secret magazine to look at the models and not because they have excellent quality bras?"

Dean looked stricken, and Sam looked like he was struggling hard to hold in his laughter. "First of all," Dean finally spluttered out, "you're too young to have _anyone _getting you going. And secondly, you're with Jack, so you can't fool me."

She grinned at him, taking another drink of her coffee. "I know. But it sure was funny to see your reaction."

"You're ridiculous," he said, grabbing another slice of bacon and chomping on it.

"Ridiculous, or just wittier than you?"

"Nobody is wittier than me," Dean declared.

"So modest," Sophie tittered, grinning as she stuffed another bite of pancakes into her mouth.

"Both of you are ridiculous, and not half as witty as you think you are," Sam chimed in, taking a bite of his omelet.

"Ouch," Sophie commented.

"Yeah, Sam, that hurts," Dean jumped in. "Why you gotta be so mean?"

Sophie perked up and pointed her fork at Dean. "So you _have _been listening to my Taylor Swift music!"

Dean rolled his eyes. "It's a common phrase, Sophie."

She shook her head. "Nope. Don't pretend like you don't know every word to that song. I know you do. I heard you humming it one day when you thought I wasn't listening."

"In your dreams, pipsqueak," Dean shot back. "I haven't devolved _that _much since you waltzed into my life with your dumb teeny-bopper music and your insane boy band obsessions."

"You were humming it right after Sam came in and told you to fold your own laundry because, and I quote, 'You're a freaking adult and it's time someone actually be a little mean to you and make you fold your socks.'"

Dean glared at her, knowing he'd been caught. "Sorry if I find an anti-bullying anthem catchy and uplifting! Is that a crime?"

Sam and Sophie laughed as the waitress, an unhappy looking older woman with a scowl on her face, walked up to their table. "Will that be all for you folks this morning?"

"Could I get a coffee to go?" Sophie asked.

The lady gave her a look, and then shuffled away.

"What are you doing, ordering coffee to go?" Dean asked. "You think you're bringing that spill-waiting-to-happen in my car? No way, sweetheart, it ain't happening."

Sophie sighed. "You know how I am without coffee."

"You just had a cup!"

"One cup isn't enough!"

"Dean, c'mon," Sam said, playing the mediator between them, as he usually did. "She's sixteen, she can manage a cup of coffee in the back of a car."

"Fine," Dean said, sitting back and lifting his hands in surrender. "But I swear, one _drop _of coffee hits Baby, and there will be serious consequences."

* * *

"I said I was sorry."

"One drop," Dean grumbled. "I said if one drop hits the seat there would be serious consequences. But _half a cup_? You're freaking grounded."

"You can't ground me, Dad, I'm already imprisoned in motel rooms every place we go."

Dean was hunched over in the backseat, trying to remove the large coffee stain in the middle of the backseat. "I can't believe you did this. My poor Baby."

"At least it'll smell nicer in here," she offered.

"I don't need your sass right now, Sophia," Dean snapped, which she just grinned at. "I'm serious. No more coffee. No more Taylor Swift. No more books. No more education. No more anything that brings you even the tiniest bit of enjoyment. I'm cutting you off!"

"Jeez, you would have thought I'd spilled acid in your car, not a harmless cup of coffee," Sophie muttered, standing outside of the Impala with her arms crossed.

"A harmless cup of coffee?" Dean practically yelled. "A _harmless_—"

"Dean, now is not the time to release your inner prima donna," Sam, who was standing a foot away from Sophie, cut in. "We're still five hours from Tallahassee. It's not like it smells bad, so we might as well just jump in and keep going."

"No way!" Dean exclaimed. "We need to deep clean my Baby so that she's still flawless!"

"If you were so worried about potential damage why haven't you been treating the seats?" Sophie asked, annoyed.

"What did I say about your sass, Sophie?" Dean snapped.

"That's not sass, Dad, it's common sense."

"Well, sorry I haven't had to worry about the backseat getting stained for the past however many years!"

"I doubt that's true," Sophie grumbled, the suggestion in her tone making Dean turn sharply and point a finger at her.

"You're gross," he snapped.

"I learned from the best."

"Okay, you two, stop," Sam said. "Dean, we're not deep-cleaning the car right now. We'll drive the rest of the way to Tallahassee, and then we can get it sorted out there."

"Yeah, listen to Sam," Sophie goaded.

"You're so annoying!" Dean exclaimed. "How can someone so annoying be trapped in the body of someone so physically adorable?"

Sophie grinned, her eyes sparkling. "It's one of the best kept secrets amongst teenage girls. You'll never know."

Dean cursed loudly and withdrew from the Impala, giving Sophie a withering glare. "I'm playing Metallica the rest of the way to Tallahassee."

"No, Dad, c'mon!" Sophie whined. "I hate Metallica!"

"That's the point," Dean said. "For some reason, your brainwashed teenage brain can't recognize pure genius, and instead has decided to consider it punishment. So, that's what you're going to get."

"Metallica is just a bunch of screeching and banging and—"

"Sophie, you're just making it worse for yourself," Sam cautioned her sadly.

She groaned and pushed past Dean, sliding into the car. "Let's get the worst five hours of my life over with, okay?"

* * *

The motel in Tallahassee was moderately better than they were used to, which Sophie was grateful for. Dean was still irritated about the pervasive smell of coffee in the Impala, so she was sentenced to making her home on the pull-out couch, but it meant she got her own TV so she didn't mind. Right when they settled in, Dean went and took a quick shower and Sam and Sophie fortified the room, drawing devil's traps and lining the windows and doors with salt. Once they were done, Dean was walking out of the bathroom, wearing slacks and a button down shirt, drying his hair quickly with the towel.

"You guys playing FBI today?" Sophie asked, flopping down on her pull-out bed and opening up the book she had started after finishing _Atonement _on the road, an Ernest Hemingway classic called _For Whom the Bell Tolls. _

"It's not _playing_, Soph," Dean said as he grabbed a tie out of his bag and threw it over his neck. "It's serious stuff."

"Uh huh. Says the guy who spends hours figuring out names for his fake IDs that manage to both conceal his identity and reflect his annoyingly specific music tastes."

"It's an art," Dean shot back as he tightened his tie.

Sophie just sighed and sat back in her pillows, opening her book. "Well, you guys go do whatever it is you need to do, and I'll sit here and do a whole lot of nothing."

Dean looked over at her. "Your sass is totally uncalled for."

"Five hours of Metallica was totally uncalled for," she pointed out.

"Look," Dean said, his voice conveying his surrender. "We should be back by eight or nine. Maybe we'll go out for a bite to eat afterwards, get you out of the motel for a while. Deal?"

Sophie grinned as she flipped to her spot in her book. "Deal."

"Good," Dean said, sounding relieved that he'd managed to shut her up for now. He looked over at Sam, who was just throwing on his sports coat. "You ready?"

"Yeah," Sam said, adjusting the sleeves of his coat. "Let's go."

"We'll see you in a few hours," Dean said, opening the door and waiting for Sam to follow him out.

Sam walked past Sophie, giving her one of those hair ruffles that simultaneously annoyed and pleased her. "Enjoy the book, it's a good one."

She nodded, and he grinned before following Dean out of the door, leaving Sophie behind.

* * *

Sophie's night went as normally as it usually did. She read a few chapters of her book before getting up, doing some quick little workouts that she had looked up on the Internet in an effort to increase her strength, and then taking a long, hot shower. When she stepped out of the shower, she wrapped her hair up in a towel, pulled on some pajamas, and then flipped on the TV as she brushed her hair out.

She was into her third episode of Law and Order: SVU when she began to feel like something wasn't right.

She glanced at her phone screen, and when she saw that it was twenty past midnight, her stomach clenched uncomfortably. Dean had said they should be back by eight or nine, and while her dad was not punctual by nature, he was never this late.

Unable to untie the knot of worry in her stomach on her own, she picked up her phone and scrolled through until she found Dean's number. She took a breath, reminded herself that her dad and uncle were more than capable of taking care of themselves, and dialed the number.

It rang five times before finally it was picked up. There was no sound on the other side, just clear silence. Sophie waited for about ten seconds before she asked, "Dad? Hello?"

A clear peal of laughter rang out on the other side, and Sophie felt sick. It was definitely not Dean. "Dad? _Dad?_ The great Dean Winchester has a daughter? Hey, guys, did you hear that? There's a girl Winchester."

Sophie's eyes narrowed. "Who the hell is this and where's my dad and Sam?"

"Well, darling, my name is Nathan, and I'm a wonderful creature of the bloodsucking variety. Your dad and his brother…well, they're a bit tied up now."

Sophie heard yelling in the background. "You hang up now!" Dean's voice yelled out. "She's not a part of this."

She heard a tongue clucking gently. "Uh oh, looks like I might have just struck a nerve." The vampire, Nathan, chuckled lightly. "Tell me, honey, what do you look like? Did you get your daddy's smug grin? Because you won't be needing that anymore."

"You go to hell!" Sophie snapped, standing up from her bed and rummaging through her duffle bag for some clothes. "You're not going to get away with this!"

Nathan laughed. "Hear that, guys? I'm not going to get away with this." He returned his attention to her. "Sweetheart, I hope you know that now that I know you exist, you're going to meet the same bloody end as your father and uncle."

"She's not a part of this!" Dean yelled again in the background. There was a thumping sound, and Sophie cringed as she heard Dean groaning in pain.

"Listen, Miss Winchester," Nathan said into the phone. "I'm awfully hungry, and so are my friends, but I'm willing to wait for dinner until you're on the menu."

"You're so dead," Sophie snapped into the phone, quickly throwing on a pair of jeans and a red T-shirt. "You think you're going to beat Sam and Dean Winchester? You've got to be the biggest idiot in the southeastern United States, and that's saying something, seeing as it's the home of the SEC."

"This is Tallahassee, sweetheart. We're more of an ACC crowd here."

Sophie moved on to Dean's duffle bag, her heart beating like crazy as pulled out one of the long, machete-esque blades. She laid it down on the bed and continued to dig until she found a syringe filled with Dead Man's Blood, which she shoved into her pocket. "How about you tell me where you are and we see just how smart you are?"

"Sophie Winchester, you stay the _hell _away from here!" Dean's voice yelled out. "There're four of them, that's too damn many. You stay right where you are, Sammy and I can figure this out, do you hear me? You stay the f—"

Sophie flinched as she heard something solid connect with something less dense, and then Dean's pained groans filled her ear. Her heartbeat doubled as Nathan's voice echoed low in her ear, and she hastily threw on her boots. "We're at Finnegan's. It's a closed down restaurant inside of the abandoned mall on the north side of town."

And then the call ended.

**Thank you all for the wonderful reviews you've been leaving. I love your feedback so much, and I love that you guys give me ideas and suggestions for what to do with Sophie and her story (although I will admit that oftentimes, your suggestions align with what I already had planned-we're just on the same wavelength like that, I guess). But most of all I love that you guys are always here, reading whatever it is that I post. Thanks for the support! As the title of the chapter says...on to the next one... ~ Lacey :)**


	46. Chapter 46: First Rodeo

Chapter_ 46: First Rodeo_

Dean didn't know how exactly he'd let it happen.

One second he and Sam had been at the morgue, checking out some of the victims' bodies to ascertain that it was indeed a vampire that was plaguing the city, and the next they'd been walking back to the Impala and they were ambushed. There had been four vampires, three male and one female, and they'd come out of nowhere. Normally, four vampires against the Winchester brothers would be a piece of cake; it'd take a whole army of vampires to take them down. But Dean had been arguing with Sam about where they should go eat dinner with Sophie, and he'd also been trying to simultaneously get his keys out of his pocket and check his phone, and then suddenly he was knocked out cold.

When he'd come to, the first thing he realized was that he was tied to a table that was firmly cemented into the ground. He tested the binds, and they were pretty damn strong. Groaning at the pounding in his head, he looked around hectically, scanning the room for a tall, broad, shaggy haired Winchester. He spotted him across the room, tied to a similar table, and Dean's heart began to pound as he saw Sam's head was covered in blood and he was slumped against the table, completely unconscious.

"Sam," Dean hissed as loudly as he dared to. Sam didn't move a muscle. "Sammy. Sammy!"

Sam didn't budge. He was out cold.

Frantically, Dean looked around him for some sort of sharp object, only looking up at the sound of a door creaking open. His eyes narrowed as he watched a tall, dark haired, broad-shouldered man walk up to him. "Dean Winchester," the man said with a slight southern lilt and a grin on his face. "Man, did we score big tonight."

"You really didn't," Dean said in a low voice, staring the man down. "I don't know if you've heard, but my brother and I, we're sort of a big deal. And there's about a zero percent chance you come out of this alive."

The man's grin remained the same, his dark eyes practically sparkling. "I've heard all about you and your brother, Winchester. Doesn't mean crap now that the both of you are tied up and helpless right now, and only one of you is conscious."

It was Dean's turn to grin. "Buddy, this ain't our first rodeo."

"The name's Nathan," the man said, and then he bared a set of vicious fangs to Dean. _Okay_, the older Winchester thought. _So not a man after all_. "This ain't my first rodeo either."

Just as Dean was about to snap something else at him, he heard the door creak open, and if it was possible, his eyes narrowed more as three other people walked in. Dean felt it was safe to assume that they were vampires as well. There were two other men, both just as large and ferocious looking as Nathan, and then a ridiculously hot redhead that waltzed in behind them. The redhead walked up to Nathan and wound her arms around his neck, hanging all over him as he grinned at Dean.

"Dean Winchester, meet my friends. Those two over there are Glenn and Harold, and this is Janet."

"Hey, sugar," Janet said to Nathan, giving him a long kiss before turning to Dean and looking at him warily. "Nathan, I don't like having the Winchesters here. I don't feel like dying today."

"I take it you're a fan of my work?" Dean asked, giving her a sly grin.

She glared at him. "Look, pal, I'm not ashamed to say you and your brother scare the hell out of me. I'm not an idiot." She looked at Nathan. "C'mon, let's drop them a hundred miles away and then get the hell out of Dodge."

"Janet, babe, don't worry. Once the tall one wakes up we'll have our meal and that'll be the end of it."

She pouted. "Nathan, please—"

She was cut off by the sound of a heavy rock guitar riff, and everyone's heads shot up. Dean looked down and saw the screen of his phone glowing from underneath his pocket. Someone was calling him.

Nathan laughed and walked over. "And who would be calling the great Dean Winchester at this hour?" he asked. "Secret lover?" Dean watched angrily, unable to do anything as Nathan pried the phone out of his pocket and looked at the screen. "Sophie? Who's Sophie?"

Dean didn't say a word. He simply glared at Nathan.

"Well, then, if you won't tell me, I'll just have to find out."

He answered the phone and put it on speaker, setting it down on the table that Dean was chained to. Dean gritted his teeth as the static from the phone permeated the air and Nathan waited, silent.

And then Sophie's voice came through the phone. "Dad? Hello?"

Dean wanted to smash Nathan's head in as his eyes lit up, looking down at Dean in merriment. "Dad? _Dad_? The great Dean Winchester has a daughter?" He looked over at the other two vampires. "Hey guys, did you hear that? There's a girl Winchester!"

Dean fought against his bindings one more time and felt his heart begin to beat irregularly as Sophie's angry voice came through the phone. "Who the hell is this and where's my dad and Sam?"

Nathan just kept grinning at Dean as he answered Sophie. "Well, darling, my name is Nathan, and I'm a wonderful creature of the bloodsucking variety. Your dad and his brother…well, they're a bit tied up now."

Dean couldn't hold his tongue. "You hang up now!" he barked at Nathan, unable to keep the pure hate out of his voice. "She's not a part of this!"

Nathan gave a little grin of victory, and then he clucked his tongue. The simple act doubled Dean's ire. "Uh oh, looks like I might have just struck a nerve," he nearly purred. "Tell me, honey," he continued, his voice now directed back at Sophie, "what do you look like? Did you get your daddy's smug grin? Because you won't be needing that anymore."

"You go to hell!" Sophie's angry voice echoed around the room, and Dean felt a tinge of pride at her obstinacy. "You're not going to get away with this!"

At that, Nathan let out a loud chuckle, and he turned to look over at his vampire companions. "Hear that, guys? I'm not going to get away with this." The two guys, Glenn and Harold, chortled dumbly, but the girl, Janet, still looked uncomfortable. Nathan ignored her and returned his attention to the conversation. He stared at Dean straight in the eyes with a bloodthirsty grin. "Sweetheart, I hope you know that now that I know you exist, you're going to meet the same bloody end as your father and uncle."

Dean couldn't keep his mouth closed. "She's not a part of this!" he spat at the bastard.

He opened his mouth to yell again, but before he could, the redhead Janet had stomped her way over and delivered a quick, heavy kick to his abdomen. Dean doubled over, groaning with the shocking pain her kick had wrought. She bent down and whispered in his ear. "You're making this a hell of a lot worse than it needs to be, dumbass."

She whipped herself away from him, and Dean leaned up just in time to hear the vampire revert his attention back to Sophie. "Listen, Miss Winchester," Nathan said silkily. "I'm awfully hungry, and so are my friends, but I'm willing to wait for dinner until you're on the menu."

"You're so dead," Dean heard his daughter snap. "You think you're going to beat Sam and Dean Winchester? You've got to be the biggest idiot in the southeastern United States, and that's saying something, seeing as it's the home of the SEC."

Dean could've grinned with pride if he still hadn't been trying to recover his breath. _Atta girl_.

But Nathan didn't miss a beat. "This is Tallahassee, sweetheart. We're more of an ACC crowd here."

There was shuffling on Sophie's end of the phone, and Dean strained to hear what might be happening. He was just starting to hope that she was going to hang up and try to call Cas or something when he heard the worst possible words come out of her mouth. "How about you tell me where you are and we see just how smart you are?"

Dean completely ignored the words of warning Janet had given him, and he furiously yelled, hoping the ferocity of his voice would hit home with his daughter. "Sophie Winchester, you stay the _hell _away from here! There're four of them, that's too damn many. You stay right where you are, Sammy and I can figure this out, do you hear me? You stay the f—"

This time, it was Nathan who kicked him in the gut before whacking him over top of the head. Dean let out another groan of pain and tried to gather his breath as quickly as he could so he could start yelling at Sophie again, but Nathan was quicker than that. He grabbed the phone off the table. "We're at Finnegan's. It's a closed down restaurant inside of the abandoned mall on the north side of town," he said shortly, and then he hung up.

Dean leaned up, and though there was blood dripping down from his head he knew that if looks could kill, he would have blasted Nathan straight past Purgatory and right into Hell. "If you touch her, you can't even imagine the world of hurt you're going to be living in," he said in a low voice.

"You're real good at dishing out threats and evil glares, Dean Winchester," Nathan said. "I just wonder how good you'll be at delivering on them when you're tied up, and dear old Sammy here is just a sitting duck." A light seemed to flare in his eyes. "I wonder, who would you choose to save? The brother you've fought Heaven and Hell with, or the baby Winchester?" He didn't even give Dean an opportunity to snap at him before he continued. "Oh, well, it wouldn't matter either way. Me, personally…I prefer the taste of grown men. There's more sustenance, I think. More hearty. Janet's the same. But Glenn and Harold over there," Nathan said, pointing over at the two big, dumb looking vampire men and grinning like an idiot, "they _love _the taste of kids. Really, gets 'em going like nothing else. The blood's lighter and a bit frothier, but it's chock full of this vitality…" Nathan looked over his shoulder at Glenn and Harold. "Ain't that right, you two? Children are your favorite?"

They both nodded, and Dean wanted to slice the grins right off their faces. Nathan, however, just carried on. "Well, don't worry, you two. Once the Winchester girl gets here, you'll have a feast like never before."

Dean just shook his head, and a grin crept across his face. It was the kind of grin that would've scared the hell out of his daughter; the kind of grin that offered no hint of humor or good will. "You're all going to be dead at the end of this," he said calmly. "Whichever way the shoe drops, that's how this ends."

"Maybe, maybe not," Nathan said. "And even if it does, who's to say we won't take Sammy or baby Winchester with us?"

"Me," Dean replied sharply. "I say it, so it won't happen. That's how it works. You're some new kind of stupid if you really think you can mess with the Winchesters and not have any blowback."

Nathan was about to say something back to him when a loud groan filled the room. Dean's head shot up as he watched his brother slowly come back into consciousness. When Sam opened his eyes, he looked beyond confused. When he glanced over and saw Dean, angry and tied up, and the four vampires, he immediately started pulling futilely on his constraints.

"Sammy boy! Welcome back!" Nathan boomed. "You just missed quite the phone call. Let me fill you in…."

* * *

Sophie was seriously trying to decide if she had a death wish.

She wasn't crazy. She knew that there was little she could do against four vampires. She knew that even if she had the lifetime of experience that Sam and Dean had, it'd still be a tough fight. She knew that even the odds of her winning a brawl with just _one _vampire were pretty slim.

And yet there she was, walking quickly down a dark street with a long blade tucked in her jacket and some dead man's blood shoved up her sleeve. She was out of options. She had prayed for Cas for nearly fifteen minutes and nothing had happened. His angel radio was somehow turned off, she supposed. Either way, she knew she was the only one that could do anything, so she sent up a quick prayer telling Cas she was going on a suicide mission to save Sam and Dean from four bloodthirsty vampires, and then she was on her way.

She stood outside of the abandoned mall, staring up at the dead neon sign. There was CAUTION tape all around the door, and it was pitch black inside. Her heart was beating erratically, but she felt the adrenaline coursing through her veins. This was terrifying, but it was electrifying, too. And she had a plan. A shaky, thrown-together-at-the-last-minute plan, but a plan nonetheless.

She tried to draw herself up taller, and then she quickly tore the tape barring her entrance, turned on the flashlight she'd brought along with her, and made her way into the mall.

As quiet as she tried to be, she could hear her footsteps echoing throughout the cavernous building. She shined her light on a bunch of stores she hadn't shopped at since the time Steve had handed her a thousand dollars and told her to go buy herself a suitable wardrobe. It was so silent she could've sworn she would have been able to hear a pin drop from across the mall.

Finnegan's. She had to find Finnegan's.

After a few more minutes of walking around, she found it. The sign was painted in obnoxious red and green, with the outline of a tasty burger resting below the name. Sophie quickly clicked her flashlight off and set it down on the ground. She wouldn't be needing it anymore.

And then, in painstaking silence, she crept inside.

She took a back route into the kitchen, and she could hear two voices talking back and forth to each other. She ducked behind an oven as they came closer.

"Nathan said that I could have her, dumbass."

She watched silently as two large, scary-looking vampires walked into the room. She quickly pulled a small, pocket sized dart gun out of her pocket and loaded a small vial of dead man's blood into it.

"He said we could share her, dickwad," the other one shot back.

"But I haven't eaten in longer than you. Remember, you got that student on her way to class last week, asshole."

"Yeah, but the week before you got that janitor, and he lasted forever, so I deserve the girl today, nimrod."

Sophie readied the dart gun and then, heart pounding, she stepped out from behind the oven. "Nimrod? That's a pretty crappy insult coming from a couple of douchebags such as yourselves."

Both of them turned to her, surprised. Before they could react, she sent a dart flying into one of their chests, and the vampire hit the ground, writhing in pain.

The other vampire bared its fangs and rushed her, but she was ready. She dodged his first lunge at her, and as he recovered and turned back around towards her she pulled out the long blade she'd kept in her jacket. He hissed as she swung it at him, and out of some stroke of pure luck, she hit him square in the neck, and she watched in genuine shock as the momentum of the blade took the vampire's head clear off his shoulders.

She didn't have enough time to dwell on her very first kill before she looked back at the vampire she'd incapacitated. She knew she didn't have a choice; she needed to kill him, or he'd just recover from the dead man's blood and come back after her. She raised her blade and quickly dispatched him, wincing as his blood sprayed over her.

She was breathing hard, unsure if she was just out of breath or going into shock. Hoping it was the former, she quickly made her way to the other side of the kitchen. She pressed her hand against the door, getting ready to leave it, when a hand fell on her shoulder.

She whirled around and lifted her blade, but it was knocked cleanly out of her hand. She gasped as a hand closed around her throat and pushed her up against the kitchen wall, and she suddenly found herself staring into a shockingly pretty face, with sharp cool eyes and shiny red hair.

"You stupid girl," the woman hissed at her. "You should have listened to your father."

Sophie scratched at the hand on her throat, trying to pry the fingers from her neck, but to no avail. "He'll kill you," she choked out.

"I know," the woman spat. "That's why you need to get out of here now. If Nathan kills you, there's no way either of us is getting out of this alive." She let go of Sophie's neck, letting her drop back down onto her feet. "Get out of here! Now! Get—"

"Well, what's going on here?"

Sophie and the redheaded vampire turned at the sound of the deep, southern voice. The vampire had dark hair and eyes, and he was looking at Sophie with a hungry smile.

"You must be Sophie. I could smell your retribution from a mile away," he said. He glanced at the bodies of his two fallen nest-mates. "Well, aren't you a chip off the old block?"

"I like to think so," she said.

Nathan grinned, and then turned to Janet. "And what were you doing, babe? Letting her go?"

Janet looked to Nathan in exasperation. "Don't you get it, Nate? If we hurt her, this Winchester guy will kill us without even trying. Maybe you haven't heard all of the stories about the Winchesters, but I have, and I don't want to be on the receiving end of his anger."

Nathan looked a little bit sad. "Oh, Janet. You're breaking my heart."

And then, with lightning speed, he tore her head off.

The sudden violence of it caused Sophie to scream, and she watched in horror as Janet's fiery red head flew to the ground a few feet away, her blue eyes still open and staring in shock. A spray of her blood rained down on Sophie, and she stood there, frozen as Nathan turned back to her, a crazed look in his eyes.

"Let's see what daddy thinks about you showing up here," he growled, and then he roughly grabbed her arm, pulled her tightly against him, and then wrapped his other arm around her neck, securing her in an unbreakable chokehold. Sophie could barely breathe as he dragged her out of the kitchen and into the main room, which was covered with dusty chairs and tables.

She tried to think as quickly as possible. She had one more vial of dead man's blood up her sleeve, as well as a pocket knife. That was all she had to defend herself. The knife wouldn't do much, but if she could just get the vial….

"Sophie!"

Her attention was reverted back to reality when she heard Sam's voice. She looked down and saw Sam tied securely to a table, struggling hard against his ropes, looking at her in terror. She felt Nathan chuckle deeply as he pushed her past Sam, and just as they made it a foot past him she had an idea.

Knowing it was going to cost her, she slammed her head back into Nathan's face, and it seemed like he hadn't been expecting it because he rocked a few steps back. Quickly, she shook the knife and the vial tucked into her sleeve down until they were in her hand, and just when they were back at where Sam was tied up, she quickly dropped the two objects into one of his entrapped hands.

Before she could check to see if he had caught them, Nathan backhanded her and sent her sprawling on the floor. She could feel the slight tear on her cheekbone that it caused, sending a small trickle of blood down her cheek. It stung, but in the grand scheme of things it was nothing, and Sophie only hoped that what she had done would be able to help Sam.

Nathan reached down and grabbed her roughly off of the floor, putting her back into the chokehold. "Little firecracker of a daughter you've got yourself, Dean," Nathan laughed, and that's when Sophie noticed Dean, tied to a nearby table and trying to wrestle out of his ropes like Sam had been. He looked harried, but when his eyes fell on Sophie, they darkened with pure hated.

"What the hell did you do to her?"

"You worried about all that blood on her? Don't you worry, now, none of that's hers. Little bitch killed Glenn and Harold all by herself, and then Janet went sweet on her so I had to take care of that."

Sophie saw the momentary look of pride on Dean's face, but then it quickly flashed back to anger. "Sophie, are you hurt?"

She couldn't really move or breathe, but she offered him the slightest of thumbs up and a hoarse, "I'm peachy."

Nathan laughed and tightened his arm around her neck, causing her to gasp for breath. Dean yanked harder on his ropes, to no avail. Nathan put his lips by her ear. "You're honestly too much fun to eat, sweetheart." And then quickly, he bit his wrist.

Immediately, Dean straightened up. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Killing her would be easy and uninteresting," Nathan explained, watching his own blood drip down his arm. "I was thinking maybe we should test out how baby Winchester would fair as a vampire."

For the first time that night, Sophie felt true fear shoot through her veins. Immediately, she started struggling against Nathan, clawing at his arm and trying to loosen the iron hold he had on her. "No!" she exclaimed, hating that she could feel his amused laughter with her body held up against his.

She felt his nose in her hair, sniffing her once, and she turned her face away from him, disgusted. "It's really a shame, too," Nathan sighed. "You smell like you would taste divine in a few years, after that youthful edge is gone from your veins. But alas, I must make some sacrifices."

He lifted his wrist to her mouth, and Dean was yelling and Sophie was trying to get away from him when without warning, his grip on her slackened.

Taking immediate advantage of this, she jumped out of his grasp and turned around to see that Sam was standing there, cut out of his ropes, and he had just jammed the syringe of dead man's blood into Nathan's neck. Nathan was doubled over in pain, and Sophie quickly raced over to grab the pocket knife and then made her way to untie Dean.

"Are you okay, Soph?" he asked, glancing at the small gash on her cheek as she made quick work of the ropes.

"I promise, I'm fine," she said, giving him a small grin. "Nothing a band-aid won't fix."

Dean nodded, and when he was free he reached into his jacket and pulled out the long blade he had brought with him to the morgue earlier that night. He made his way over to Nathan, who was now huddled on the ground, the effects of the dead man's blood at its peak.

"Well, little man," Dean said. "I won't say I told you so, but I mean, I told you so."

And then with one quick swing of the blade, Nathan was no more.

Dean dropped the blade and looked up at Sam. "You alright?"

"Yeah," he said, nodding and looking down at Nathan. "Nothing a gigantic bag of ice won't cure."

Dean turned to Sophie, who was sitting on top of the table Dean had been tied to, her legs swinging in the air. "And you. Are you sure you're okay?"

"I told you, I'm fine."

"Good," Dean said, straightening up. "Now I won't feel guilty for yelling at you. _What the hell did you think you were doing_?"

Sophie narrowed her eyes. "Saving you two, that's what. And by the looks of it, you needed it."

"No!" Dean yelled. "You don't do any saving! You were half a second from getting killed, or becoming a vamp, and that's not freaking allowed!"

Sophie crossed her arms over her chest. "But I didn't die and I didn't become a vamp. Face it, Dad, I saved you and Sam and if I hadn't come who knows what would have happened."

"Why didn't you call Cas?" Dean asked in exasperation. "Why the hell did you think it'd be a good idea to come on your own?"

"I tried Cas for, like, fifteen minutes!" Sophie exclaimed. "He wasn't answering! And I couldn't wait for him to respond, so I just…came."

Dean was about to blow up some more, but Sam's hand fell on his shoulder. "Dean, let it rest for tonight. Let's just get cleaned up and go."

Dean looked over at his brother. "Where'd you get that dead man's blood, anyway?"

"Sophie dropped it in my hand along with the knife when she distracted Nathan with the head-butt. Pretty clever, actually. Thanks for that, Soph."

Sophie grinned. "Finally, some well-deserved praise. You're quite welcome, Sam."

Dean just shook his head. "Look, don't get me wrong, I'm happy you kicked ass. Just…don't make it a habit, okay?"

Sophie shrugged, taking off her blood-soaked jacket and tossing it onto the ground on top of Nathan's headless body. "Then you don't make it a habit to get taken down by a group of four vamps. I mean, if I was able to take down two on my own, you two should have made mince meat out of the four of them."

"Touché," Dean grumbled, and for a moment, Sophie overwhelmingly reminded him of Bobby, the man who might as well have been his father. He would've chewed them out for getting taken out by a lone group of vamps, too. The thought put a slight grin on his face.

Bobby would've loved, Sophie, Dean was sure of it.

But, in typical Dean Winchester fashion, he said none of what he thought. "Look, how about we don't screw up easy hunts anymore, and you don't do anymore saving. Sound good?"

"Sounds good," Sophie agreed. "Now let's get out of here, this old mall is super creepy and I'm covered in a lot of blood. I need a new jacket by the way."

"You always _need _something, don't you?" Dean grumbled. "New jacket, new shoes, new bedding, new books—"

"Hey, I just saved your life. Consider it a token of your appreciation."

"We are not making this a regular deal, sweetheart, got it?"

Sophie just smirked, hopping off of the table and grabbing her pocket knife off of the ground. "My new jacket needs to be denim, like my old one. Size small. It's well-made, too, so don't skimp out on it to get a cheaper version."

She walked away from him and Dean just grumbled, looking over at Sam. "She gets that sass from you," he snapped.

Sam just snorted. "Sure, Dean. Whatever you say."

**UM THAT FINALE THOUGH. I, personally, thought it was fantastic. So so so many feelings. I actually cried at that scene towards the end, and it generally takes a lot to make me cry during a TV show. The episode really took me back to Supernatural, circa season 5. I'm so excited for Season 11!**

**As always, thank you for reading! Feedback always and forever welcome! More to come quite soon (ie-Wednesday) ~ Lacey :)**


	47. Chapter 47: Skittle?

_Chapter 47: Skittle?_

"Your follow-through needs to be way more relaxed than that, Soph."

"I'm trying!"

"No, c'mon, don't hold it like it's an oversized AK-47 you don't know how the hell to use. It's just a pool stick."

Sophie looked at Dean in exasperation. "Look, I'm just not meant to hustle people in pool. It's not my gift."

"I'm sorry, is that an excuse I hear?" Dean asked, giving her a stern look.

She groaned. "I suck at this, though."

"Only because you're not listening to me," Dean snapped.

They were at a little hole-in-the-wall bar in Farmington, New Mexico, and it was relatively crowded for a Thursday night. They'd just finished up their third case since the vampire fiasco in Florida, and it was during that trip that Sophie admitted that she'd never played a game of pool in her life. So after they'd wrapped up the case, a pretty nasty shapeshifter that had been plaguing a lot of the upper-middle class neighborhoods, Sam and Dean sought to rectify that misfortune.

"Why can't we just accept the fact that this wasn't meant to be my gift and move on?" Sophie whined after accidentally sinking the cue ball for the third time in a row.

"Because," Dean said. "Being good at pool isn't a gift. It's the product of work and focus. All you have to do is work hard."

She rolled her eyes. "I don't want to work hard at this. I suck at it."

"Or maybe your attitude just sucks."

Angrily, she just shifted the pool stick in her hand and narrowed her eyes. "Fine. You win. Rack 'em up."

After about an hour of playing, switching off between Sam and Dean teaching her, she was actually starting to get the hang of it. She wasn't going to be hustling scary truckers anytime soon, but even Dean had to admit, when she ditched the attitude she didn't do half bad.

Eventually, it was decided they could all use a break. They were sitting at a table, Sam and Dean drinking beers and Sophie sipping a Sprite through a straw. She was telling them about the time she had to play Annie in the school play.

"So wait," Sam cut in, a look of pure amusement on his face. "You had to actually sing and everything?"

"And dance," she remarked.

"Why the hell did you do it?" Dean asked.

She shifted in her seat. "I was the only person in the class who had red hair. Or, at least, as close to red as strawberry blonde is."

Sam grinned, shaking his head. "No. No way. They have wigs for that scenario. Why'd you _really_ do it?"

Sophie sighed, swirling her straw in her soda. "I had a crush on the guy who played Daddy Warbucks," she admitted. "He was a fifth grader, I was a first grader. It was a thing."

Sam and Dean both grinned. "And how'd that turn out for you?" Dean asked.

Sophie winced. "I tried to kiss him onstage and the school got in trouble for promoting incestuous relationships."

Both Sam and Dean burst out laughing, and after a second, Sophie joined in. It was the kind of laughter they never really got to experience, the kind Sophie didn't mind being made at her expense. She glanced at Dean and saw the crinkles on the sides of his eyes that stood out when he laughed, and while maybe those were a sign of age, they also were a sign of joy, and she was suddenly very glad that she was able to give that to him.

Dean chuckled for a little while longer, and when it died down he took a drink from his beer and then set it back down with a satisfying _clunk_. "I knew I had a go-getter from the start," he laughed.

"I was, like, six," Sophie defended. "And Thaddeus Pattie looked great in a suit."

"Thaddeus Pattie?" Sam repeated, beer frozen midway between the table and his mouth. "Six-year-old Sophie was in love with a boy named Thaddeus Pattie?" He burst out laughing again, his brother following suit.

"Har har, you guys just keep on laughing," she grumbled, rolling her eyes. "Eat it up like the toddlers you are."

Dean was still laughing. "God. That's hilarious." He took another drink, and then looked at Sophie with a gleam in his eyes. "So, you still know the songs?"

"No chance in hell."

"Oh, c'mon, one little encore for your old man."

"No freaking way."

"Do it for Sam, then," Dean pleaded.

"Yeah, Soph, do it for me," Sam goaded.

"You two are unbelievable!" Sophie exclaimed, standing up. "I'm getting a refill, and when I come back, we're going to talk about anything other than the most embarrassing phase of my young life."

The two brothers were still laughing as she walked towards the bar, and Sam looked over at Dean. "Your offspring not only enjoys Taylor Swift and the color pink, but she's into musical theatre. It's like the most beautiful cosmic joke that's ever been pulled."

Dean just shrugged. "Maybe, but she's getting good at pool, so there's that."

Sam grinned. "True. But I mean, can you imagine her with the curly short hair and the red dress? I bet she was adorable."

The mental image of Sophie dressed that ridiculously made Dean crack another grin. "God, I'd pay some good money to see that."

Dean looked over and watched as Sophie waited at the bar for the bartender to refill her Sprite. It was a crowded night, so she was fifth or sixth in line, and as she waited she sat on one of the barstools and absentmindedly kicked her boot-adorned feet back and forth and she watched the end of the Cubs vs. Cardinals game on TV. She was wearing jeans tucked into her boots and an oversized plaid shirt, and her hair was down, making her look a few years older than sixteen.

Dean found himself grinning, just looking at her. That pretty girl sitting on the barstool was half of him, he told himself. He had somehow made her. It was mind-boggling to think about, really. Especially now that he knew her and cared about her.

Absolutely mind-boggling.

He was so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he almost didn't notice the guy who walked up to the bar next to her. He was tall and bearded, and there was a glass of something amber-colored in his hand. He leaned over and said something to Sophie, a little too closely to her ear, and she looked at him in disinterest and curtly replied before turning back to continue watching the game. Dean's eyes narrowed as he saw the man's hand move to her back, and she snapped something at him and turned away from him.

"Hey, Sam, you seeing this?" he said, nudging his brother in the arm.

"The game?" Sam asked absentmindedly, looking down at his phone. "Yeah, the Cubs are going to win, I can feel it—"

"No, not the game, the prick trying to put his grubby hands all over our Little Orphan Annie."

Sam looked up from his phone just as the man reached over and touched Sophie's arm, which she yanked away from him. "What the hell?" Sam said loudly, his voice barely making a dent in the thick mix of voices in the bar. He went to stand up, but Dean placed a hand on his arm and pushed him back down. Sam looked over at Dean like he was crazy. "Aren't you going to do anything?"

"Not yet," Dean said, keeping a close eye on his daughter. "I want to see what she does."

"Are you joking?" Sam asked. "That guy's, like, fifty. And I mean, she—dammit, Dean, he's touching her hair now."

Watching the man trying to woo Sophie disgusted Dean, but he stopped himself from lunging at the creep. Because there would always be creeps, just like there would always be monsters, and Dean wanted to make sure that when push came to shove, Sophie could put up a fight. So when she hit the man's hand away and snapped something very sharply to him, Dean grinned.

But then the man started to get angry, and he wrapped his hand around her wrist and pulled her closer to him. Sam looked over at Dean in disbelief, but the older Winchester shook his head. "Not yet," he said.

Sam and Dean, both fighting the urge to get up and knock the guy into next week, watched from afar as Sophie, looking annoyed, ripped her hand away from him and slid off the barstool, snapping something at him that Dean couldn't hear, but seemed to anger him. Just as Sophie went to walk away, he grabbed her arm and whirled her around in an attempt to pull her into his chest, and that's when she jumped into action.

Deftly, she grabbed the wrist of the hand holding her and twisted it downwards until he was forced to let go, and then she delivered a perfectly succinct elbow to his chin. He crouched down in pain as he held his face, and for good measure, she kicked his knee and his leg swung out from underneath him, leaving him a crumpled, groaning heap on the ground. There were a few drunken whistles resounding throughout the bar, and Sophie just glared at the man on the ground before grabbing her newly refilled Sprite, which the bartender handed her with a smile, and turning to go.

Dean was practically beaming with pride when the fallen douchebag reached out and grabbed onto her ankle, causing her to lose her balance and spill her drink before falling onto her knees.

And that was it. Dean was on his feet, teeth clenched in fury, Sam not far behind him. Just as Sophie sent the heel of her boot into the guy's face they got to her. Sam helped her up off of the ground just as Dean grabbed the man by his collar and lugged him up to his feet, pulling roughly so that the man was being partially strangled by his own shirt.

"Let me go, Sam, I want to hit him again!" Sophie exclaimed, her face flushed with anger, her green eyes narrowed in annoyance.

"Hear that, asshole," Dean said into the man's ear, grinning devilishly from ear to ear. "She wants to hit you again. And I'm inclined to let her."

"Alright, alright," the man said, bleeding from his nose and sporting a lovely boot-shaped red mark across his eye. Dean let go of him only after ascertaining that he was too beaten up to go at Sophie again. "I'm leaving her alone now, I get it."

Sophie just brushed herself off and glared. "Maybe do the world a favor and leave _all _the girls alone from now on."

"Bitch," the man spat.

Even though Sam was still holding onto her arms, she managed to kick the bastard where the sun don't shine, and as he keeled over, grabbing onto the bar for support while he wheezed in pain, the whole bar erupted into applause and whistles just as a scary-looking bouncer started to make their way towards them.

"We should go," Sam noted, pulling Sophie two feet back from the man.

"Your drinks are on me!" a man at one of the pool tables shouted. "A pleasure to pay for anyone who can take down Pat the Perv!"

"Excellent," Dean said, clapping his hands together. "Let's get the hell out of here."

* * *

Around eleven o'clock that night, they were all sitting at the table in the motel, eating out of a box of pizza. "I sort of kicked that guy's ass, didn't I?" Sophie said with a grin.

"You sort of did," Dean assured her.

"God, what a rush," she laughed, taking a bite of cheese pizza. "And I mean, what a cliché, too. Sleazy douchebag hitting on the totally not interested underaged girl at the bar. Could he get anymore unoriginal?"

"People who are drunk tend to not care that much about originality," Sam pointed out. "They pretty much only care about one thing."

"Not true," Sophie said. "I don't have a whole lot of experience with being drunk, but on the rare occasions that I have a little too much, I don't want to have sex with people. I usually want to just sleep."

"That's so boring," Dean said, shaking his head as he folded a piece of meat lover's pizza in his hand. "Why are you so boring?"

Sophie pouted. "I'm not boring. I'm adorably grandma-ish."

"That is actually the perfect description for you," Sam noted with a grin.

"I can even knit," Sophie proclaimed proudly. "I mean, not really well, but I make a mean scarf."

Sam and Dean just looked at each other in mild surprise, and then Sam grinned. "Hey, she's your kid, not mine."

Sophie grinned and stood up. "Well, I'll be right back. Little ladies' room."

She tossed her crust into the trash, since she never ate it, and as the door to the bathroom closed behind her Dean grumbled, "Why does she always waste the crust? That is a perfectly good hundred calories right there."

"Because it leaves more room in her stomach for the actual pizza part of the pizza," Sam explained as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"But there's always room for more, I just don't get it."

"Just because you have a bottomless pit for a stomach doesn't mean everyone else in the world does, Dean."

He shrugged and took another bite of pizza. "I still can't believe she knits." He chewed thoughtfully. "And yet, I also sort of see it." He chuckled, shaking his head. "She played Annie in the school play, can knit scarves, and can also decapitate vampires and knock a grown man flat on his ass. Pretty damn impressive, if you ask me."

Before Sam replied, Sophie walked back out of the bathroom, promptly walked to the coat hook on the wall, grabbed Dean's car keys off of it, and tossed them to him. Surprised, he watched as they hit him in the chest and fell to his lap, one hand still resting behind his neck and the other cradling his pizza. "What the hell?"

"We're going shopping," she said quickly.

Dean straightened up, putting his pizza down. "It's eleven thirty. Now isn't exactly the best time for you to be craving some new shoes."

"I don't need shoes, Dad," she said, giving him a look. He had the feeling he was supposed to understand the underlying meaning, but he was lost.

"Then what the hell do you need?" he asked.

Sophie rolled her eyes and looked at Sam, who just looked a little amused. Sophie looked back to Dean, her expression one of exasperation. "Tampons, Dad. I need tampons."

Dean looked like he had just forgotten the entire English language. "Huh?"

"Please don't make me explain tampons to you."

Sam just shoved Dean's shoulder. "God, Dean. Just take her to the nearest gas station. It's not the apocalypse."

"I would rather face that again than have to deal with this," Dean muttered.

"Oh, suck it up," Sophie said as she rolled her eyes again. "Before I start talking about how I also need Midol."

"I'm coming, I'm coming," Dean said quickly, grabbing the keys and wiping his hands off on his jeans. "We'll be back in twenty," he said to Sam. "Are you sure you want to hold down the fort? Because I could always—"

"Oh no, I'm good here," Sam said with a grin. "You go face your fears, Dean. It'll be good for you."

"You better wipe that gloat off your face before we get back, jerk," Dean shot at him. Then he got up, made his way to the door and opened it, gently pushing Sophie through by her shoulder, and then stepping out and closing the door behind him.

As they made their way to the car, Dean wouldn't make eye contact with Sophie. She kept looking over at him, and he just stared straight ahead at the Impala. "Dad, seriously?"

"What?" he replied, making it to the driver's side and opening up the door.

"Stop pretending I'm not here," she said, sliding into the passenger's seat. "Or looking at me like I'm diseased every time I'm in your line of sight. Not sure how much anatomy you took in the three seconds you were in school, but this sort of happens to me every month."

"Stop it," Dean snapped. "Seriously, don't say another word."

Sophie was having a blast. "No, really Dad, have you never spent long enough with one girl to get to know her time of the month?"

"So help me, Sophie, if you don't—"

"Just for future reference, I'm usually around the last week or the first week of the month, depending on the time of the year."

"If you don't stop talking I'm leaving you on the side of the damn road. Hope you get along well with overly friendly truckers."

Sophie couldn't stop laughing until they reached the gas station, a tiny little dump on a mostly empty road. They pulled up right to the door, and Dean quickly handed her a twenty. "I'm staying in here. You go in and get your crap."

Sophie was still grinning. "Sure thing. You want anything? Maybe a pacifier, a baby rattle, some formula…."

The bitch face he shot in her direction almost sent her into another unstoppable bout of laughter. "Beer. I want a lot of beer."

She just rolled her eyes, closed the door, and made her way inside.

There were only two other people in the store, the grouchy looking old man at the check-out counter and a tall, pretty woman with bleach blonde hair chopped short at her shoulders wearing tight fitting jeans and a Van Halen crop top perusing the beer section. Sophie made a beeline for the aisle she was looking for, grabbing everything she needed and then grabbing a pack of Skittles for good measure. Then she made her way to the cash register and dumped everything onto the counter, and the man wordlessly scanned them. "That'll be twenty dollars and thirteen cents."

Sophie looked at the twenty in the palm of her hand. "Are you serious?" she asked.

The man just glared at her.

"Okay," she continued slowly. "Do you think you could just, I don't know, loan me the thirteen cents? I _need_ this stuff."

"Do you _need_ the Skittles?" the man asked in a bored voice.

She crossed her arms and huffed, looking sadly at the enticing little red packet. "Yes."

"Then you _need_ thirteen more cents."

Sophie was about to give up when the short haired girl walked up behind her. "Here you go, hun," she said, giving Sophie a wink as she slapped a quarter on the counter. "Will that do it for you, mister?"

The old man looked annoyed and took the quarter, opening up the cash register to deposit it and Sophie's twenty. Then he dumped her stuff into a bag and handed it off to Sophie.

Sophie turned around to look at the girl, offering her a small grin of gratitude. "Thank you."

The blonde smiled. "Anytime, Sophie."

The grin fell quickly off of Sophie's face. "How do you know my—"

And then the blonde's eyes flashed black.

Sophie backed up until she hit the counter, her heart nearly stopping inside of her chest. She knew she didn't have a weapon on her, but she reached in her pocket anyway. The woman raised her hand and with a flick of her wrist, Sophie heard an awful gurgling screech from behind her. She didn't need to turn around to know that the old man behind her was dead.

"Sophie Winchester," the blonde said with a grin. "We meet again."

Sophie's eyes narrowed as her hand found the pocket knife in her jeans. It was special made by Cas, and while it wouldn't permanently hurt or kill an angel or a demon, it was able to slow either one of them down if she could get a good shot.

"You're Taylor," she said as calmly as she could, trying to keep her breathing in check. She glanced out of the window, but the view of the Impala was blocked by a giant sign on the door advertising cigarettes. Dean couldn't see her, and she couldn't see Dean. Trying not to let her panic overwhelm her, she whipped her head back to glare at the evil blonde in front of her. "I thought we sent you to Hell."

"I bounce back quick. Perks of being the Devil's favorite," the demon said with a twisted smile. "So what is it that you're reaching for in your pocket there? Packet of salt? Post-It note with some scary Latin written on it?"

Wordlessly, Sophie drew out her pocket knife and flipped it open. Taylor threw her head back and laughed.

"You're joking right? Seriously? _That's_ your defense against me? God, this is too easy. Really, my talents are being way underutilized here."

And then Taylor lunged at Sophie, who used the back of the check-out counter to balance herself and give her enough power to lodge the knife into Taylor's stomach.

The demon froze, her face an inch away from Sophie's, her face contorted in pain. She started shaking, agony glazing her eyes. "How…how is that…how are you….?" she gasped out.

"I bounce back quick," Sophie snapped. "Perks of being an angel's favorite." And then she wedged the blade in deeper and left it there, taking one sad look back at the dead cashier and then grabbing the incapacitated Taylor around her torso and dragging her to the doors, which she kicked open and stepped outside of.

She dropped the moaning form of Taylor in front of the Impala, and immediately Dean turned off the car and stepped outside, looking at the fallen demon in absolute shock. Wordlessly, he walked over and leaned down to inspect the blade that Sophie had driven deep into Taylor's stomach, and when he looked back up, he saw Sophie standing there, chewing on something and looking mighty proud of herself. She extended a hand filled with multicolored candies to Dean, a twinkle in her eye.

"Skittle?"

**These last couple chapters highlighting badass Sophie have been so much fun to write! But don't worry, guys, I promise there's much more to come showing that when it boils down to it, Sophie's still just a teenage girl with quite a lot on her plate. **

**Coming at you with the next update on Saturday morning! Gracias for reading! ~ Lacey :)**


	48. Chapter 48: The Loophole

_Chapter 48: The Loophole_

Sophie sat on her bed back home at the bunker, listening to Sam and Dean arguing in the hall outside of her door. She wondered if they actually thought that she couldn't hear them, or if they just didn't care. Either way, they were going at it like an old married couple.

"She can't just stay here! Maybe it's not permanently etched into your memory like it is in mine, but that bitch almost _killed _my daughter!"

Sam's voice echoed in retaliation. "Yeah, I know, and it's not like I'm planning on tucking her in and bringing her breakfast in bed every morning. We're just going to keep her nice and locked up where we do the usuals, and we keep her here until we can squeeze everything out of her that we can."

Dean's loud groan could be heard even from where Sophie sat. "I don't know, Sam. That's pretty freaking risky. What if she gets out?"

"She won't. She just won't. Even if she managed to get out of the chains and devil's trap, which she won't, she'd still have to get out of the locked door. And you know as well as I do that the place is more effective than a maximum security prison. And Dean…we need to get information out of her."

Dean was quiet for a moment, and then they started talking in lower voices, and Sophie couldn't hear. She sighed, grabbing the book she was currently reading off of the bed and staring at the cover. _As I Lay Dying_. Glancing at the title sent an unexpected shiver down her spine.

She didn't want to think about _how_ Sam and Dean were going to get information out of Taylor. But she didn't really have to think about it. Because she knew.

After a moment, the door to her room opened, and Sam popped his head in. "Hey."

"Hey," she replied back.

He stepped in and closed the door behind him, shoving his hands into his pockets. "So, um, Dean's going to go talk to Taylor for a little bit, and—"

"He's not going to talk to her," Sophie interrupted flatly. "He's going to go torture her."

Sam looked uncomfortable. "I mean, he's not going to go easy on her, no, but I wouldn't call it—"

"I would," she said, looking up at him in resignation. "But there's nothing I could say to make him not do it, is there?"

Sam gave her a sad look. "You almost died in his arms because of her, Soph. That's not something he's going to forget. It's not something I'm going to forget, either."

"That doesn't mean he needs to go all Guantanamo Bay on her," Sophie grumbled.

"It means we have to do everything we can to figure out who she's working for, what they want, and what they're planning on doing to get it," Sam said with conviction. He walked over and sat down next to her on the bed. "Look, Soph… I love you. You're my family. And I know that the moment Dean steps out of that room, I'm going in and taking his place because figuring out what she knows is the only way to figure out what exactly we're protecting you from."

Sophie leaned over and rested her head on Sam's shoulder. She was quiet for a few moments, thinking about what he'd said.

_I love you. You're my family_.

She hadn't had that kind of verbal acknowledgement of affection since her mom had died, and she realized that while the Winchesters' methods weren't always kosher, they were never borne from ill will. They didn't hurt people to hurt people; sometimes they just hurt people to save people. And besides, Taylor was hardly _people_. She was the monster that had possessed her friend, almost killed her _twice_, and was tracking her for who knew how long before all that. The bitch had killed Ryan and that poor man at the gas station without a second thought. She wasn't exactly an innocent little flower.

Sophie breathed in the comfortable and familiar scent of Sam, a combination of coffee and aftershave. He was the best friend she'd ever had, the best role model, the best co-guardian. And he loved her. And he'd do anything for her. The realization hit her straight in the chest. "I love you, too, Sam."

His arm wrapped around her, and he gave her shoulder a squeeze. "Don't worry about Taylor," he said after a moment. "She won't escape, and when we figure out everything we can from her, we'll kill her."

His words must have triggered some sort of memory in her, becase suddenly, Sophie sat up quickly, her face a mask of horror. "Oh my God."

"What?" Sam asked, letting go of her and looking at her in surprise.

Sophie felt her eyes begin to pool with tears, and her visceral reaction even took herself by surprise. "I stabbed her," she said blankly.

"What?" Sam repeated, confused.

"I stabbed her," she said again, a tear falling down her cheek. "Taylor possessed somebody, an innocent human being who was probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time... And I stabbed her right in the gut, and that means I k-killed someone."

Sam's expression immediately changed to one of pity. "Sophie, no…."

"I killed someone," she repeated, in shock. "I killed a human being. I…I killed…."

Sam immediately pulled her back into his embrace. "Don't do that to yourself," he said softly, hating how she was trembling with shock and the tears she was trying to hold back. "You can't. You were defending yourself, and you did the right thing. She was going to kill you. It's the only way to defend yourself against a demon. And you can't put that blame on yourself."

"But I—"

"Taylor killed that girl the moment she possessed her," Sam interrupted sharply. "And that's hard and sad and unfair, but it isn't your fault. It's not your fault that you were driven to do that. You can't let it eat you alive. Not when the alternative for you would have been dying."

Sophie was still shaking, but she was slowly starting to come down from her state of shock. "I know," she said in a small voice. "It's still hard."

"I know," he said gently. "I know."

They stayed like that for a long while, Sophie leaning on Sam as he rhythmically rubbed her shoulder, not knowing how else to ease her hurt.

After about ten minutes, Sam looked own to say something to her, and he saw that she'd fallen asleep, his soothing presense calming her down enough to get her to finally slip into unconsciousness.

He gave a sad grin. Of course she'd been exhausted. It'd been a long haul for her. And even after the trauma she'd experienced, the girl had been running on very little sleep, and eventually her physical need to rest was going to win out.

Gently, he moved her off of his shoulder and onto her pillows, covering her up with her blanket before slowly getting off the bed and walking over to her door. He glanced back at his niece, saw how peaceful she looked, and then quickly turned off the light and left the room.

When he made his way back to the main room of the bunker, he was surprised to see Dean sitting at the main table. "Hey," he said. "Already done with Taylor?"

"Not even close," Dean replied, digging into the bowl of soup he'd made for himself. "I just wanted to know what Soph had to say about it before I went in there and did any real interrogating."

"Well," Sam said as he heaved a big breath, sitting down opposite from Dean, "she didn't really love the idea of you tearing Taylor to shreds to get information out of her, but she gets it, I think."

"That's good," Dean said. He didn't think he could stomach it if Sophie hated him for doing what it took to get the information they needed. He certainly would understand it if he disgusted her—hell, even _he _hated himself for doing some of the things he did. But one thing he never wanted to lose was Sophie's respect, and it had really bugged him that interrogating Taylor might have ended that.

Sam continued, watching Dean closely for his reaction. "And then she had a panic attack when she realized stabbing Taylor back at the gas station meant that the human she possessed was killed."

Dean stopped eating, looking up at Sam with a disbelieving expression. "Oh no."

"Yeah," Sam said as he took yet another big breath, remembering the look of absolute terror on Sophie's face when she had come to the realization. "I talked her down, but it's definitely something that's not going to stop bothering her."

Dean sighed, swallowing another spoonful of soup. It was sad, but he'd been killing demons for so long that he'd almost forgotten that their meatsuits were actually humans, the people they were supposed to be saving, with families and hobbies and lives. He'd become desensitized out of necessity, because sometimes killing the hosts of demons was the only way to kill a demon and neutralize a threat, and while that was a hard pill to swallow, it was also the name of the game of hunting. And he didn't even think twice about it now.

But Sophie, the sweetest and most sensitive girl he'd ever known—not that he'd known that many girls—would of course be traumatized by the knowledge that her actions had led to a person's death. "What's she doing now?" he asked after mulling over his soup for a little while longer.

"Sleeping."

Dean nodded. "Good. She needs it." Then he stood up, pushing his bowl of soup away from him and looking over at Sam. "We can deal with all of this stuff later, though. Right now, it's time to find out what our lovely demon friend has to tell us about Beelzebub."

* * *

Dean hated everything about Taylor. He hated how she blindly followed the Devil, who wasn't even roaming the earth but was trapped in the Cage. He hated how she'd almost killed Sophie. He hated how she had an obnoxious sense of humor that made Dean want to throttle her.

But perhaps what Dean hated the most was that smile. He'd seen it on Jack's face when she had possessed him, and now he could see it on the new body. It was the kind of smile that screamed _I know something you don't_, and that drove Dean up a wall. Every second she was still alive, he was failing, but he knew if he wanted a chance to rescue his soul from Beelzebub, then he needed to find out what she knew.

He stared at the demon, annoyed that she'd hijacked such a hot woman. "Before we begin," Dean said, rolling up his sleeves, "I want you to know that this is going to hurt like a bitch."

Taylor grinned up at him from where she sat, chained securely to a chair. "Already been through more centuries in Hell than you can fathom, Winchester. Whatever you've got coming my way is gonna feel like an ant bite."

A dark half-grin twitched at Dean's lips. "You're forgetting that I went to Hell for forty years," he said in a low voice, staring Taylor down. "And that might not make my résumé quite as impressive as yours, but I do have something that you don't."

Taylor just glowered at him. "And what's that?"

"I was the apprentice of Alastair. I know torture better than anyone. And I can tell you right now, the pain you're going to feel for nearly killing Sophie, it's gonna hurt a little bit more than an ant bite."

Dean saw the little flash of fear in her eyes, but it was quickly gone. "Do what you want," she said flippantly, but he could tell he had scared her. She was trying too hard to sound indifferent. "I have nothing to tell you. You know everything already. Lucifer wants your daughter dead, so that's what I'm trying to achieve. End of story."

"Why, though?" Dean asked. "I've already given up my soul to Beelzebub. My number's almost up. There's no way to change that, there's no way Sophie can change that. Why does he want her dead?"

Taylor just glared at Dean silently.

Dean grabbed the demon blade from his belt and slammed it into Taylor's knee without preamble, causing her to scream out in pain. "Why did Lucifer give you the direct order to kill my daughter?" Dean yelled. A vein was standing out on his forehead, and his face was red, and his eyes were filled with danger.

"You're going to have to do better than that, honey," Taylor hissed through gritted teeth.

Dean nodded, yanking the knife out of her leg and digging it into her shoulder, carving a deep line towards her neck. She screamed at the top of her lungs, writhing in the chair and convulsing with pain. "I've got all damn day, _honey_," Dean nearly growled at her. "We can do this until I make it hurt so bad you beg for a death that will never come, or you can tell me why the Devil wants to kill Sophie?"

Taylor seemed to weigh her options, biting her lip in pain and deliberation. To help her make her decision, Dean pushed the knife deeper into her skin, and she screamed, "She's the loophole!"

Dean froze, his face close to Taylor's, glaring into her evil eyes. "Who. Who's the loophole? What does that mean?"

"Your daughter," Taylor breathed heavily, rolling her eyes through her agony. "You know, bratty little ginger with the attitude problem? She's the loophole to Beelzebub's deal."

"How?" Dean snapped.

"I can't tell you," she hissed.

Dean immediately wedged the knife deeper into Taylor's shoulder, to the point where the entire blade had passed through. Her blood poured out onto Dean, and her screams filled his ears, but he didn't care. He let the blood bathe him, the screams fill him. Whatever it took to get the job done. "_How_?" he snarled again.

"I can't tell you because I don't know!" Taylor screamed. "He never told me for exactly this reason!"

Dean pulled the knife out from Taylor's shoulder and she slumped, breathing deeply. He stared at her. "He knew we'd capture you."

"He knew there was a good chance," she huffed. "After all, if you and your brother were able to stop _him_, he certainly expected you'd be able to stop me."

Dean stood there silently for a moment, staring at the demon in front of him in pure hate. "If she's the loophole, why does Lucifer want her dead? A loophole would mean I get out of my deal, right? And that's what Lucifer wants. He'd rather stay in the Cage than risk Beelzebub opening it and finding some way to kill him."

Taylor shook her head. "Look, I'm the errand girl," she snapped. "I do whatever Lucifer asks me to do, without question. And he was adamant with his demand—the Winchester girl is the wild card, the loophole, and she needs to die."

"Well, sorry sister, but that ain't gonna happen, not while I'm still kickin'," Dean said. "So if you're out of relevant information, I think it's time we end this."

Taylor grinned. "Out of relevant information?" she repeated. "Baby, I know more about Lucifer and Beelzebub than you, your brother, and your angel pet Castiel combined. I've worked with the Devil for centuries. I'm the only demon I know of that has a way to communicate with him. Would you call any of that irrelevant?"

Dean glared at her. "So what aren't you telling me?"

"Nothing," she said. "I'm just saying, keeping me around might work in your favor. I know how Beelzebub works. I know what makes him tick. I know how to navigate the awfully stormy, confusing ocean that is the First Hierarchy. I'm your most valuable resource. Do you really want to cut off your only source of knowledge just because I almost killed your _precious _Sophia?"

"Yeah, I want to," Dean growled, flipping the bloodied knife in his hand. He placed the very tip of the knife on her chest, right over her heart, and he could see the satisfying flicker of fear in her eyes. "I want nothing more than to drive this blade right through you and watch you become nonexistent."

Suddenly, he shoved the knife into her body, but at the last moment, he made sure to avoid her vitals. She screamed in pure agony, a long, drawn out, wounded cry, but she did not die.

Dean yanked the knife back out, wiped it on a towel he had stuffed into his back pocket, and shoved it back into his belt loop. Then he looked down at Taylor, who was breathing heavily. "But I won't kill you. Not yet." He turned and threw the blood-soaked towel into the corner of the room, and then glanced back at the bloodied Taylor. "That was for Sophie."

And then he stormed out, slamming the door behind him.

**You people and your reviews. Seriously, you're the best. Thank you thank you for reading and always leaving your forever entertaining and uplifting feedback. Until next chapter. ~ Lacey :)**


	49. Chapter 49: Education Is Good For People

_Chapter 49: Education Is Good For People_

"I want to go to school!"

"What teenager actually wants to go to school?"

"Believe it or not, Dad, some people my age think there's more to life than figuring out the next best way to skip class."

"Who even _are _you?"

"Well, sorry I enjoy learning!"

Sophie and Dean were going at it in the kitchen, yelling at each other over the sound of their morning coffee brewing. In hindsight, they probably should have waited to have the conversation until there was caffeine in their systems, but unfortunately they didn't, and the result was an all-out verbal battle.

It had started when Sophie had brought up the fact that school was starting in a week. She made a passing reference to the European history class she was excited to take, and Dean immediately looked up at her like she was crazy. "There's no way you're going back to school."

She just stared at him blankly, sure that she had somehow misheard him. "What?"

Dean shook his head, giving her one of those faces that let her know he meant business. "Taylor was able to find you, unprotected and off your guard, at a party less than twenty miles from here. I'm sorry, but I'm not putting you out there again just to not be able to save you the next time."

Sophie's eyes narrowed. "Taylor's been in our creepy bunker dungeon for a long time now. We don't have to worry about her anymore."

"Yeah, but we still have to consider whoever she's working for," Dean told her. "If I have learned anything as a hunter, it's that the messenger is never the most dangerous enemy."

She stared him down, eyes sharp and questioning. "So who's the big boss man?"

A flash of discomfort shot across Dean's face, but then he was back to normal so quickly Sophie wondered if she had imagined it. "We don't know yet. That's the point. We can't protect you from what we don't know."

She shook her head, crossing her arms. "It doesn't matter. Either way, I have to go to school. It's the law."

"The law," Dean spat distastefully, as if she'd just suggested he started taking tap dancing classes. "You really think I've ever given a single damn about the law? Don't insult me."

"You know, there's a reason why you're legally supposed to go to school," Sophie shot at him. "It's because _education is good for people_."

"How the hell are you related to me?"

"Maybe if you'd taken a biology class you'd know!"

The bickering went on for what felt like hours, until finally, Sam barged into the kitchen, still wearing the Stanford sweats he slept in and a ratty T-shirt, his hair unkempt and his eyes alit with annoyance. "You two are out of control!" he snapped. "It's seven in the morning. _Seven_. This is the first day in the longest time I've had the opportunity to sleep in. And you two just ruined it!"

"It's his fault!" Sophie exclaimed, pointing at Dean.

"What are you, eleven?" Dean shot back.

"That's going to be my IQ if you don't let me go to school!"

"Wait," Sam cut in, turning to Dean. "You told her she can't go back to school?"

Dean gave his brother a pointed look. "Yeah, I did. I don't know about you, but I'm not ready for the Bash 2.0. When she's at school she's exposed and vulnerable for over six hours, not to mention so are the rest of the students around her. We might still have Taylor under lock and key, but who knows what's really out there looking for her." He didn't add what both he and Sam new. That they knew all too well what that threat was, and that they were just unwilling to tell Sophie about him.

Sam just stared at Dean for a moment, and then he sighed and shook his head, grabbing a mug off of the drying rack and filling it up with freshly brewed coffee. "Maybe he has a point, Soph," Sam finally said, looking at his niece apologetically. "Believe me, I think school is important much more than the average hunter, but…I also think safety is more important."

Sophie just looked stunned. "You're siding with _him_?"

"I'm not siding with him," Sam backtracked. "I'm trying to make you see that we're not saying this because we don't want you to go to school. We're saying this so that we keep you alive."

It seemed to hit Sophie that there was a chance she might actually lose this fight, and she jumped onto the defensive. "If you two take me out of school, I'm not going to go to college," she said in her most rational voice. "If I don't go to college, I can't go to law school. If I don't go to law school, I don't have a career. If I don't have a career, I become a hunter."

Dean shook his head. "That's a pretty big leap, even for you, Soph. If we take you out of school you're not going to become a hunter."

"You don't know that," Sophie responded, shrugging. "I mean, you got yourself through school, just barely, and yet here you are."

"I went to Stanford, though," Sam put in, gesturing towards his sweatpants, as if the insignia on his loungewear proved his entire argument.

"No. You _dropped out _of Stanford," Sophie pointed out. "I don't want to do that. I want to go to college and graduate and have a semi-normal life. High school is sort of the necessary stepping stone for me to accomplish that."

Dean grabbed two more mugs from a cabinet that was too high for Sophie to reach and filled them up with coffee, handing her one of them. "Look, we won't rule it out completely," he placated. "But we're going to need to figure out some way to keep you safe. I won't compromise on that."

Sophie looked between the two of them for a few moments, and then she scowled. "We're going to figure this out," she snapped, and then, clearly not in the mood to keep talking to them, she stomped out of the kitchen, coffee in hand.

"She's psycho, sometimes, have you noticed?" Dean said once he heard the door to her bedroom close. He leaned against the counter, wondering how it was possible that he could already be so exhausted after just waking up. "Does she have a death wish or something? Because I'm literally just trying to keep her alive, and she's crying because she might miss _school_. I would have loved a reason to quit going to school at her age."

Sam shot him a glare. "Have you ever stopped to think about what school might actually mean to her?"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Dean asked, looked at his brother, clueless.

Sam just exhaled, taking a quick gulp of coffee before continuing. "Dean, her whole life here revolves around hunting and monsters and the supernatural. And now she's actually gone hunting with us and she knows the deal and she gets how dangerous and crazy it is. Going to school, studying different subjects, doing homework, hanging out with kids her age… that's the only dose of normal that she ever gets. And just yanking that away from her without any warning…. I mean, there's no way that will have any positive ramifications."

"Except for her still being alive," Dean grumbled.

"Except that," Sam allowed. "Either way, I think we need to think this through a little more thoroughly. We should try to exhaust all of our options before pulling her out of school."

"Fine by me," Dean replied, surrendering. "I'm just not letting something like the Bash happen again. Not on my watch."

"Well, obviously me neither," Sam said. "I don't know, maybe we should ask Cas about it the next time we see him, maybe he's got an idea. If he could somehow adjust the cloak he put on Sophie so that only he can find her—"

"But that would involve another soul touch," Dean immediately cut in, thinking about that night nearly a year before when Cas had first protected Sophie from the evil in the world. "Ain't no way in hell that's happening again. And besides, it's not like Cas is always around. He disappears for weeks on end sometimes like the mysterious son of a bitch that he is, with no way to contact him. We can't one hundred percent count on him."

"I know," Sam sighed, shaking his head. "I'll just…give me some time to think about it. I'm going to figure this out."

"Well, clock's ticking, Einstein," Dean said shortly. "School starts in a week."

Sam just gave him a hard look. "I'm going to figure this out."

* * *

A few days later, Dean and Sophie left the bunker for a few hours so Dean could start teaching her how to drive a stick shift. Once they'd gone, after a huge argument over which of the priceless classic cars in the basement they'd be practicing on, Sam immediately pulled out his phone and called Cas.

The angel didn't answer, but five minutes later he materialized in the bunker, ten feet away from Sam.

The younger Winchester brother looked up at Cas when he appeared. "Hey! Glad you dropped in."

"I couldn't answer your phone call," Cas explained. "Heaven doesn't exactly have the best reception. But I could tell you really wanted to speak with me about something important."

"Yeah, I did," Sam said, pulling out the chair next to him, gesturing for Cas to sit down. "I'm trying to find a way to allow Sophie to go back to school with a little bit more protection than she had last year."

Cas nodded in understanding, picking up on Sam's cue to sit down about five seconds later than he should have. "You want to prevent another fiasco like what happened at the end of last year?"

"Yeah," Sam said, nodding. He still hated thinking about the night of the Bash, of Sophie crumpled in a bloody, dying heap on the motel bed, and of a grieving, wounded Dean clutching onto her like his very proximity could keep her alive. "Dean said she can't go back if we can't find a way to make sure she's safe, and I mean, I agree, but…but she needs school, Cas. She needs a bit or normalcy in her life, you know?"

Cas nodded again. "I do know. So what is it that you need exactly?"

Sam shrugged in defeat. "I'm not even really sure. A way to keep an eye on her, or be alerted if there's danger, or, or….I don't really know, Cas. Just something. That's why I called you. We're sort of prepared to throw a Hail Mary if that's what it takes."

Cas frowned. "You're going to throw a Catholic prayer in order to grant Sophie safety? How does one even throw a prayer?"

Sam tried not to roll his eyes in annoyance. Today was not the day he wanted to have to explain human expressions to Cas. "I just mean that this is kind of our last ditch effort to figure this out."

Cas looked thoughtful for a moment. His blue eyes were filled with consternation, and Sam half expected him to tap a finger to his chin to complete the look of deep introspection. Then, after a few long moments, he slowly asked, "What if she had a partner, a protector that went to school with her?"

Sam's expression turned to surprise. "Like…some sort of bodyguard?"

"Yes," Cas affirmed. "Someone who could watch out for her, be alert in case of danger, and be able to protect her if danger did strike."

After a moment of consideration, Sam nodded. "Theoretically, Cas, that'd work. But I don't know who I'd trust to look out for Sophie, and whoever it would be, they'd have to somehow blend in with high school kids. That's not exactly a broad job description."

To Sam's surprise, Cas offered him a rare grin. "I know the perfect candidate for the job."

Sam looked at him warily. "Cas, you might look weirdly childish and youthful for someone as old as you, but no matter how hard you try you can't pass as a teenager."

The look of mild insult on Cas' face was almost comical. "I wasn't suggesting _me_, Sam, but thank you for offending me." Sam gave him an apologetic shrug. "I assume you remember the night that you and Dean were accosted by four vampires in Florida."

"Vividly," Sam replied.

"Well, Sophie prayed to me that night asking for help," Cas said. "And I couldn't respond because there was an urgent matter in Heaven. That, and I trusted that you and Dean would be able to find your way out of a simple vampire hunt without needing angelic assistance or a sixteen-year-old human girl's help. Clearly, that was a misjudgement."

"Who's being offensive now?"

It was Cas' turn to look indifferent. "Now we are even."

Sam nodded. "Okay, fine. So what was happening in Heaven, then?"

Cas, seeming to realize he was going to be there with Sam for a while, shrugged off his trench coat and threw it over the back of his chair. "One of my younger brothers caused a bit of a ruckus. He's a guardian angel, a very specific breed of angel, and he was supposed to save his charge—or his human, rather—from being hit by a train in Russia. But he didn't; he let his charge die. No guardian angel has ignored a direct order to save their charge in centuries."

Sam stared at Cas with a mixture of interest and confusion. "What does this have to do with Sophie?"

"This angel, obviously, was taken into Heaven's custody and questioned," Cas continued. "After a long investigation, it was determined that he allowed his charge to die because the man was on his way to brutally murder his entire family, including his wife and six daughters. Two of the girls were barely out of infancy. The angel felt that more harm than good would have come out of saving the man."

Sam's eyes narrowed as Cas' story unfolded, but he remained silent.

"Anyway, Heaven's decided to go easy on this angel. Consider it like…like…charging him with a misdemeanor instead of a felony. In reality, he saved seven innocent lives at the expense of one, and for that, Heaven couldn't fault him that much. But he did break the law. So while usually, once a guardian angel's charge dies the angel gets a generation of time off, this angel has been sentenced to go back to work directly." Cas sat back in his chair, his blue eyes settling on Sam. "If you'd like, I can request that he be assigned to Sophie."

"She doesn't already have a guardian angel?" Sam asked. "Wouldn't those get assigned to everyone at, like, birth?"

Cas shook his head. "A common misconception is that every human being is afforded a guardian angel. That is not necessarily the case. Guardian angels are assigned to the overwhelmingly unfortunate and the overwhelmingly important people on earth, and not necessarily at the time of their birth, but when circumstances call for it. But once an angel is assigned, they watch over their charges until either one's death."

Sam considered everything that Cas had told him. He straightened up, returning Cas' steady gaze, his hands folded in front of him. "So, basically, you're offering to sign up Heaven's biggest juvenile delinquent to watch over Sophie when she goes back to school."

"Eremiel is truly good," Cas immediately said, and Sam was surprised at the seriousness of his tone. "I fought hard for him to not be severely punished by Heaven's authorities. Perhaps because he reminded me so much of you and Dean."

"What?" Sam remarked, caught off guard. "How?"

"I'd think that'd be obvious," Cas said, his blue eyes locked on some far off thought in the distance. "He disregarded a directive from Heaven in order to save lives. He exercised free will in a way very few angels are willing to do. He is, in my opinion, the future of Heaven, a courageous and righteous servant of humans. He would let nothing happen to Sophie."

Sam tried to sort through all his options, but this one seemed to make the most sense. "So you said his name is Eremiel?"

"Yes," Cas affirmed. "And before you ask, his vessel is young in appearance. And his vessel is his own, as well. The boy whose soul inhabited it died long ago and has been residing in Heaven for many years now."

Sam nodded. "Well, I need to talk to Dean about it when he and Sophie get back. But this could be the answer we've been looking for."

"Excellent," Cas said. "This works out great, if you ask me. Eremiel is a good angel, and he deserves to protect someone as good as Sophie."

"Well, he better not just deserve it," Sam grumbled. "He better be good at it, too. If he decides to let a train hit Sophie, there's no way he's making it out alive between me and Dean."

"Eremiel would never let anything happen to her. He only let the man in Russia die because he knew of his murderous intentions. And I don't believe Sophie would ever be inclined to murder seven innocent people."

"True," Sam said. "Well, I think it's our best bet. But I still need to sell Dean on it."

* * *

"No way."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Dean. Take two seconds to actually think about it before you shoot it down."

Dean rolled up the sleeves of his flannel as he shot Sam a glare and then disappeared under the hood of the Impala. "I don't need two seconds, Sam. I'm not entrusting Sophie to some punk angel that I've never even met before. Besides, I hate angels."

"I'm just going to point out the obvious; you don't hate Cas."

"Yeah," Dean said, and the sound of metal clinking against metal arose from his car. "Cas is the _one _exception to that rule. But angels are douchebags, Sam, and I'm not really down to hitch Sophie to one for the rest of her life."

"Not even if it means making sure she's safe when we're not around?" Sam challenged. "Maybe right now we can force her to stay with us and under our protection, but sooner or later that's not going to be an option. We can't force her never to go to college, start a life, be her own person. A guardian angel might come in handy then. And Dean…_we _might not be around forever. We almost die every other week. You—and don't get mad at me for bringing this up—but you handed your soul to Beelzebub on a silver platter—"

Dean just lifted his head from the car, shooting Sam a scathing look. "Low blow," he interrupted sharply before returning to his work.

"These aren't trivial things, man," Sam continued. "This guardian angel thing could be really, really good."

After a long moment of no sound but Dean tinkering around with the car, he silently withdrew from his Baby and slammed the hood shut. He wiped his oily hands off on a ratty old rag and threw it into the corner before looking back at Sam. "I want to meet this Eremiel guy first," he finally said. "I want to have a conversation with him, face to face, just me and him. Then I'll see how I feel about it."

Sam was surprised at how little he had needed to fight Dean on this one. Or maybe he wasn't surprised. After all, Dean was pretty much willing to do anything to make sure his daughter remained safe. Enlisting an angel for help wasn't the worst idea in the grand scheme of things. "Okay, good," Sam said. "I'll get Cas to set it up."

"In the meantime," Dean said, "we need to figure out this whole Parent Involvement thing."

At that, Sam looked at Dean in confusion. "Parent what?"

Dean walked past Sam with a look of sheer annoyance on his face as he made his way out of the bunker's garage, Sam following him. "This year there's this whole Parent Involvement initiative at Sophie's school, assuming we find a way to let her go back. Every parent has to have something like fifteen hours of involvement in the school if their kid is a part of a club or organization. Which Sophie is."

Sam couldn't keep the smirk off of his face. "So wait, you're sort of, like, joining the PTA?"

Dean turned sharply on his brother. "I am _not _a part of the PTA," he growled in a threatening voice.

Sam let out a low whistle. "Dean Winchester is a member of the PTA. This is monumental. What a time to be alive."

"You're a dick."

"No, seriously, if I scrapbooked, this would get its own page."

"I'm going to kill you."

"Now that's not how an upstanding member of the PTA should be talking," Sam goaded.

"Sam, I swear to God, if you don't stop—"

"What are you two arguing about?"

They both looked up to see Sophie standing in front of them, carrying a large bucket of laundry in her hands. She had a bad habit of saving all of her laundry until she literally had no more clothes left, so she was currently wearing one of Dean's old Black Sabbath T-shirts and the athletic shorts she had worn for her morning run. Her hair was tossed up in a haphazard bun, and she was wearing the reading glasses she'd gotten Cas to materialize for her when she realized her vision wasn't exactly perfect. She was peeking out from above her glasses at the two of them, eyeing them questioningly.

Sam cleared his throat in amusement and gestured towards Dean. "Well. You're looking at the newest member of the PTA."

A look of horror dawned upon Sophie's face. "You're kidding, right. Please tell me you're kidding."

Dean looked offended. "Would it be so bad if I was a part of the PTA?"

"Those parents are idiots," Sophie said, point blank. "You wouldn't be able to sit through a meeting without strangling one of them."

"True," Dean agreed. "Well, don't worry. I'm not a part of the PTA." He shot Sam an annoyed look. "I just…apparently I'm supposed to do fifteen hours of helping out the school since you're a member of a school organization."

Sophie stood there, her mouth open in shock. "You're…you're going to volunteer…at my school?"

"Well I don't really have a choice, do I?" Dean snapped in annoyance. "Not if you want to keep being a part of student government."

"And the track team," she mumbled.

"Track team?" Dean repeated in surprise. "You're on the track team?"

"I was thinking of trying out," she said meekly. "I was going to ask you first, but…I don't know, I'm fast. I think I'd be good at it."

"I think…I think that'd probably be fine," Dean asked, still shocked that she was thinking of joining a sport.

"Wait," Sophie said suddenly, putting the laundry basket down on the ground and straightening back up. "If you're talking about volunteering at my school and stuff like that…that must mean you've decided to let me go."

Dean heaved a big breath. "We may have found a way to keep you safe in school. But it's not one hundred percent yet, so don't get your hopes up."

Despite his warning, Sophie's eyes brightened in excitement. "Wait, really?"

Wondering if he was going to regret this, Dean nodded. "Yeah, but I'm serious, don't get your hopes up yet. We're still working out the details."

A grin split open Sophie's face. "You two are the best, really." She sidestepped her basket of laundry and quickly hugged Sam and then Dean, giving her dad a tight squeeze before letting him go.

He looked at her with amusement and affection. "All because we're trying to let you go to school," he mused. "Yep. You're definitely not my kid. I want a refund."

She just grinned and went back to pick up her laundry. "So, what's the deal with me going back? What crazy, supernatural thingamabob have you conjured to keep me safe at school?"

"You know, it's a work in progress," Dean said. "We'll explain once we know for sure."

She just shrugged. "Whatever. As long as I get to go back, it works for me." She glanced down at all of the clothes in her basket and sighed. "Well, I'm going to finish this up. We still getting Chinese tonight?"

"That's the plan."

"Sounds good," she said, and then she turned and walked away with her laundry in hand and a skip in her step.

Once she had disappeared, Dean looked over at Sam. "This Eremiel guy better be the real deal. Because it's going to suck if she's this happy about going to school and in the end we can't let her."

Sam nodded, a determined look in his eyes. "This is going to work out, Dean. I can just tell. Eremiel is going to be a great thing."

**Guys. Lol. I just went back and reread the first few chapters of this story, just for funsies, and man was my writing subpar at the beginning of this. Seriously, thank you to you guys for pushing through those first few rocky chapters and still supporting this story. I will be going back to edit and fine tune those first few chapters at my earliest convenience. Until then, thank you for reading and reviewing! ~ Lacey :)**


	50. Chapter 50: Books and Boys

_Chapter 50: Books and Boys_

Sophie and Jack were perusing a local used bookshop a few days before school was meant to start. Sophie still hadn't received the okay from Dean about going back, so she was trying to distract herself by constantly going places with Jack.

"Have you read _Slaughterhouse-Five_?" Jack asked her, lifting a book from one of the racks and showing it to her.

"Nope," Sophie said, grabbing it from his hand. "I've actually never read any Vonnegut."

"This one's worth the read for sure," he told her, grinning as she skimmed the back cover. "Plus it's half off."

"Sold," Sophie declared, tucking it under her arm as she continued to scan the shelves. After a moment, a book caught her eye, and she pulled it out, grinning. "_Brave New World_. You've read this, right?"

"Actually, no," Jack said, taking it from her hands. "It's always been on my to-read list, but I haven't gotten around to it."

Sophie gave him a look of mock horror. "Well, put it at the top, because it's amazing."

He laughed. "If you insist."

They were laughing and discussing books and their lives, and Sophie was grateful for a day of not having to worry about anything. No vampires, no demons, no witches, no werewolves. No dire hunt that needed to be handled. It was just Sophie and Jack, having a normal day together, in a normal life in a normal town. Sophie never thought she'd have such a deep appreciation for normality, but she did.

After a while longer of perusing, they made their way to the check out with their books in their hands. Jack went first, setting down the stack of five books he'd decided to buy. Sophie waited in line a few people behind him, looking at his face in the mirror that was hung up behind the cash register and grinning at the look of happiness on his face when he realized the most expensive book in his pile was on sale.

She looked back at her books, which included the Vonneget book that Jack had recommended as well as a few Brontë books she'd been wanting to read. She grazed her hands over the covers. She wondered for a brief moment if her love of reading was all that healthy. Did she even love reading, or did she just love the escape that it offered her? The thought unsettled her for the briefest of moments, and then she shook it off. Who _didn't _want to escape reality, even if only for a short while?

All the same, she decided that maybe she was going a bit overboard on the book haul, and she was about to go put one of them back when a deep voice resonated from behind her shoulder.

"If you're going to put any of those back, it better be the Vonnegut."

She jumped, quickly turning around to see who had spoken to her. And then she came face to face with the most disarmingly attractive person she'd ever seen.

He had golden hair tussled carelessly on the top of his head, a strong jaw, and hazy green-grey eyes that might have been as deep and dark as a forest if not for the spark of mischief that seemed to brighten them up from the inside out. He looked so out of place in the quaint little bookstore, like some sort of Californian god had stepped right out of his storybook and accidentally landed in the middle of Kansas. Sophie was so distracted by how good he looked that she almost forgot to answer him.

"I don't know," she finally mustered up the will to say. "My friend says the Vonnegut is really good. And I've already read a lot of Brontë."

The boy's—but was he just a boy? Sophie couldn't decide at first glance what his age was—eyes gleamed with amusement. "Your friend's halfway right. Vonnegut has some interesting stuff. But he picked out the most generic one to recommend to you. If you're going to read Vonnegut, you've got to go with _Cat's Cradle. _But I have a feeling that either way, you're going to enjoy any of the Brontë books more."

Sophie just stood there, stunned. Who was this gorgeous stranger, just budging his way into her personal bubble like they'd been friends for years? Who was he to shoot down a harmless recommendation from the boy she was kind of crazy about, while she was less than five feet away from said boy? Suddenly, despite her initial feelings of being a bit dazed at the person in front of her, she was annoyed at him. "Well, I think I'm still going to try out this one. Maybe you missed something the first time you read it."

She turned back around, seeing that she was next in line to check out, and she clutched the books to her chest and silently begged to be called up as soon as possible. She glanced to her left and saw that Jack was all checked out, and he was ordering coffees for them at the tiny little café attached to the bookstore. She could practically feel the boy's eyes boring a hole in the back of her head from behind, and so she forced herself to stare straight ahead until the nearest register opened.

Quickly, she made her way to the cash register, and after a moment's thought, she set one of the Brontë books, _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_, to the side. She made idle conversation with the lady at the checkout, and once her bag was in her hands, she quickly walked over to Jack and grinned as he turned around to face her, two cups of coffee in his hands. "Dark roast with a little milk and sugar for you, black for me," he said, offering her one of the cups.

She smirked. "It's okay, Jack, you don't have to pretend you didn't just order yourself a vanilla latte."

He gave a smile of surrender. "Can't you even let me _pretend _my drink of choice is a little manly?"

"It's okay, I like that you like vanilla lattes. It shows that you have a sweet, feminine side."

"Well now you're just being insulting."

She laughed, taking a sip of her coffee and looking up at Jack, into his midnight eyes. Maybe he didn't have the raw hotness of the guy standing behind her in the book line, but he was attractive and kind and witty, and he had stuck with her through some incredibly awful crap, and she was glad he was with her.

She took his hand as she turned to leave the store, and then nearly dropped her coffee when she found herself a centimeter from running face first into the chest of the Californian god. "Sorry about that," he said, not looking even the least bit sorry. He looked at her with a confusing combination of amusement and intensity, and she couldn't help but blush. And then when she saw the almost hurt look on Jack's face as he witnessed her reaction to this stranger, her blush deepened.

"Excuse me, we were just leaving," she said quickly.

"I saw that you tossed _The Tenant_," he noted, ignoring her attempt to get out of the conversation. "That's a shame. It's really the best one of the bunch."

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't have had time to read it anyways," she said offhandedly.

Judging by the look on his face, he didn't believe a word she said. "That's alright," he said. "I'm sure one day you'll get around to it. Maybe when your boyfriend starts recommending something halfway decent."

Sophie could practically feel Jack bristle beside her, and in order to avoid a scene she simply grabbed her car keys out of her pocket and made a show of it. "We're going to go now," she said.

She went to sidestep him, and he moved effortlessly to block her path. She was about to lose her cool and snap something very rude at him when he simply extended his hand. "I'm Remy, by the way. It was a pleasure to meet you."

She looked at his hand, and then back at an angry Jack, and then she coolly responded, "Sophie. And the pleasure was mine."

Then she ignored his hand and walked out of the store.

* * *

"Who was that?" Jack asked as Sophie drove them back towards Jack house, where she had to drop him off before going back home to the bunker.

"I have no idea," Sophie responded. "He was talking to me in line at the bookstore, that's all. Seemed like kind of a jerk to me."

"Kind of a jerk? Try definitely a douchebag."

Sophie looked over at him and smirked. "Somebody jealous?"

"Hell yeah I'm jealous," Jack grumbled. "Did you see the guy? He looked like he just stepped out of Men's Fitness magazine. And he was clearly into you."

Sophie laughed. "Trust me, Jack, you have nothing to be worried about. First off, I'm not interested in guys that act like jerks. Secondly, I'm never going to see that random stranger again."

"And thirdly?"

She looked at him in determination. "And thirdly, he's not you. So it doesn't matter."

He offered her a smile that almost felt relieved. "I'm glad you feel that way. Because if that had been the female version of that dude that had walked in today, you'd have been a goner."

"Hey!" Sophie said, slapping him on the shoulder.

"No but really, did you see those biceps? He was making me very sexually confused."

"_Now _who's being insulting?"

"I kid, I kid," Jack laughed. "Now keep your eyes on the road, S, I don't feel like dying today."

She just shook her head and laughed as she turned into Jack's neighborhood. They were quiet, listening to a soft early 2000s song playing on the radio as she pulled up at his house, putting the car in park and turning to look at him. "You really shouldn't worry about that guy today, or any guy, honestly," she finally said. "You make me happy. Like…really happy. Okay?"

He grinned at her. "Glad to hear it, S."

He leaned over and kissed her, and she grinned into his lips. Being with Jack was so easy in a world that was so dang complicated all the time. She loved that about him. She loved that even though he knew about the other half of her life, the half that was so deeply entangled in the dark and scary parts of the world, he still liked her and still wanted her in his life. It was so gratifying, a little piece of light in her very dark world.

They stayed there for a few minutes, kissing slowly, until finally Jack's older sister Izzy, who didn't go back to college for a few more weeks, stepped out onto the front porch step and lightly tapped her foot on the ground, an amused grin on her face. This usually happened whenever Sophie was about to leave and the two hung out in front of the house. His parents would good-naturedly send out one of Jack's sisters to signal his expected return to the house, and Sophie would be on her way.

Jack pulled away from her, sighing. "Maybe one day they'll stop treating me like I'm another daughter."

"Old habits die hard. Besides, I think it's adorable," Sophie commented, smiling at him. She leaned over and gave him one more kiss on his lips. "I'll see you around, okay?"

He nodded, sliding out of the car and looking in one last time before shutting it. "Bye, S."

"Bye, Jack."

He shut the door and walked up to meet his sister, who he tried to push away in embarrassment when she ruffled his hair, and Sophie waited until the door to his house closed before she drove away, grinning all the while.

* * *

When Sophie pulled up at the bunker, she put her car in park and just sat there for a while. She was thinking about Jack, and the day that she'd had with him. She was reluctant to go back inside of the bunker. She loved Sam and Dean, undeniably, and she even would go so far as to say she loved the life she led with them, the life filled with danger and mystery and darkness and courage and strength.

But today, she wasn't quite ready to go back to it. She wanted a bit more normal.

She reached down and grabbed her bag of books that she'd purchased from the bookstore. She was kind of kicking herself for not just buying _The Tenant_. After all, it'd been the book she'd gone in there for. But she couldn't let herself take that random stranger's advice over the advice of her… Well, what even was Jack to her? Her friend? Her boyfriend? Her friend that she kissed sometimes and had a strong attraction to?

She decided maybe she would retract her earlier thought. If normal teenage girls spent a majority of their time deciphering their feelings towards boys and their relationships with them, maybe she _was _glad that her life was mostly abnormal.

Finally, she decided it was time to bite the bullet, and so she grabbed her bag and slid out of the car, making her way towards the bunker.

When she descended down the stairs into the main room, she immediately saw that Cas was there sitting with Sam. She quickened her pace until she hit the ground level, placing her bag on the table and watching as they turned to face her. "Cas, hey. What're you doing here?"

To her surprise, Cas offered her a grin. "Why don't you ask Sam?"

Sophie turned her head to Sam, a look of confusion on her face. "Sam?"

Her uncle gave her a grin. "We found a way to let you keep going to school," he said happily.

A grin began to split Sophie's face. "Really? What is it?"

Sam pulled out the chair next to him, and Sophie quickly plopped herself down in it. "Cas enlisted an angel friend of his to be your guardian angel. He's going to go to school with you, be in the same classes as you, make sure you're safe."

At that, Sophie's smile waned. "So…I'm getting a bodyguard."

"I wouldn't call it that," Sam tried, placating her.

"I would," she responded, frowning. "So…no more privacy for me? None at all? Just some angel with a stick up his ass making sure I don't break any rules or do anything stupid?"

"That's not how guardian angels work, Sophie," Cas cut in. "Guardians cannot make decisions for their charges or interfere with the consequences of the choices that they make. They can only protect their charges from outside forces, and try to alleviate danger when it is presented. He will not be constantly by your side, he will just always be connected to you and will be able to sense when trouble comes your way."

"So he can't, like, tell me what to do?"

Sam gave a small grin. "You sound like Dean."

Cas just shook his head. "He can certainly recommend that you not do something he thinks is dangerous, but ultimately, you determine your own fate."

Sophie sighed. She wanted to argue more, but she had to admit, if she were a parent this was kind of the sweetest deal you could be offered for the protection of your child. "If…if this is what it takes…."

Cas could sense her disquietude. "I promise you, little lion, that Eremiel is a truly good angel. He will let no harm come to you while you are under his watch."

"Eremiel?" Sophie repeated, wondering why the name unsettled her stomach.

"That's his name," Cas explained, and Sophie restrained herself from saying _I know, Cas_.

"Where's Dad?" she asked instead.

"He wanted to talk to Eremiel before he agreed to let him be your guardian angel," Sam said. "They're in the war room right now."

"Wait, Eremiel's here? Now?" Sophie asked, shocked, feeling a nervous knot begin to form in her stomach. "You guys are really going through with this? Right now?"

Sam tried to look sympathetic. "I know it's kind of crazy, Sophie, but…." He seemed be fighting with himself on saying something, and then he just let out a breath. "Look, I know Dean always says he's never going to let anything happen to you, and he's right. He's going to do everything that he can possibly do to make sure you're safe. But unexpected danger…danger that you can't always protect others from…that's sort of part of the territory when you're a part of the hunting world. So this is our way of kind of…having a second line of defense."

Sophie just took in his words. Sometimes it still shocked her that these two men— and Cas, for that matter— had opened up their hearts to her like they had, that they had chosen to care for her and care about her. Sam and Dean may have been related to her by blood, but they certainly didn't have to be her family. But they had chosen that.

And she suddenly realized that she didn't want to cause either of them any extra pain because she refused to accept their protection. She knew they'd already experienced too much pain in their lives.

"Okay," she finally said, nodding. "Okay, fine. A guardian angel it is."

At that moment, Dean walked out of the war room and into the main room. He looked a little irritated, which seemed to get even more pronounced when he saw Sophie was there. "Sophie, you're home," he said in surprise.

"Astute observation," she said, eyeing him suspiciously.

"So? How'd the interview go?" Sam asked. "Where's Eremiel?"

"He flew back up to Heaven for a hot second. Apparently he needs to get some seal of approval from the higher-ups upstairs before actually going through with this."

"And?" Sam continued. "Thoughts? Comments? Questions? Concerns?"

Dean look frustrated, and crossed his arms over his chest to prove that he was. "He's…well, he's the perfect guardian." He uncrossed his arms and made his way to the table, where he sat down and put his feet up onto the table. "He's serious, he's committed, he's skilled, he's focused. He doesn't seem like a brainwashed angel dumbass. He answered all of my questions with the best answers anyone could give."

Sam looked bemused at the irritated look on Dean's face. "Is there a problem with that?"

"No," Dean said, still looking annoyed. "There's no problem with _that_. The problem is that the dude…. Well, Jesus, Sam, the dude looks like he just walked out of an episode of _90210_."

"I'm not even going to ask why or how you even know that show exists, Dean," Sam said, shaking his head.

Sophie, however, was lost. "Well I've never heard of that show. What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means—" Sam started.

But then there was a loud _whoosh _of wings, and then suddenly Sophie felt a different presence behind her.

"See," Dean grumbled in a low voice. "He's a freaking One Direction wannabe."

Slowly, Sophie she turned around.

And when she saw who it was, her eyes widened.

And then, after three seconds of staring, her eyes narrowed. "You've got to be kidding me."

**Well, whoever could it be? **

**Thanks for sticking around for 50 whole chapters, guys! I'm so glad people have found something to like in this story! Here's to hopefully 50 more chapters (but that's not a promise so don't hold me to that). Until next time! ~ Lacey :)**


	51. Chapter 51: Eremiel

_Chapter 50: Eremiel_

* * *

_Slowly, Sophie she turned around._

_And when she saw who it was, her eyes widened._

_And then, after three seconds of staring, her eyes narrowed. "You've got to be kidding me."_

* * *

"You? You're my guardian angel?" She whirled back around to face Sam, Dean, and Cas, all of whom looked genuinely surprised. "No. No way. I want a different one."

Sam looked completely flummoxed. "Soph, he's not a purse, you can't just switch him out for a new one. He's all there is."

She turned back around and stared at the angel that had appeared to her. He looked the same as she'd seen him earlier, with the tussled golden hair, forest colored eyes, and a jawline that could cut a diamond. Except now he seemed to radiate, emitting a glow from within. He looked, dare she say it, angelic. And in return for her stares, he offered her another self-assured grin.

"I thought you said your name was Remy," she snapped.

His eyes gleamed. "I had a feeling if I told you my real name I would have let the cat out of the bag a little earlier than it needed to be. _Eremiel_ sounds a little too angelic, wouldn't you say?"

"Um, excuse me," Dean's voice emanated from behind her. She turned around to see her dad standing tall and looking peeved. "Would someone explain what the hell's going on here? Have you two met?"

"Yeah," Sophie said, hands on her hips. "He stalked me at the bookstore I went to with Jack."

"Stalked?" Sam repeated, looking unsure about this whole thing for the first time that day.

Eremiel calmly placed his hands inside the pockets of the jeans Sophie tried not to notice he wore so well. "When Castiel told me he was trying to get me assigned to the Winchester daughter… I had to see her for myself. So I ditched my parole officer in Heaven, so to speak, and came down here to see what I would be working with. I didn't really mean to make contact, but… What can I say, she was about to make a terrible literary decision and I had to intervene. Not that she listened." He shot Sophie an amused grin, and she simply scowled. "That doesn't bode well for our relationship, my friend."

"You tried to make my friend look like an idiot," she said angrily.

Eremiel shook his head. "I won't claim to know that kid that you're with, but I didn't _try _to make him look like an idiot. He was doing that pretty well on his own."

"You're an ass," she snapped.

"Look, I'm sure your friend is a truly good person," Eremiel conceded. "I was just questioning his compatibility to someone as compelling as you."

This time, Sophie whirled on Cas. "You're connecting me to the hip of the biggest wiseass in Heaven?"

"No," Cas said plainly. "I'm connecting you to his soul."

Sophie let out an exasperated groan.

Cas looked apologetic, shooting Eremiel a look. "Eremiel has a sense of humor that few angels have. But he also has the dedication, courage, and ability to think for himself that few angels have. I have the utmost faith in him as your guardian angel."

Sophie looked to Sam and Dean, helpless. "Guys, c'mon. Look at him," she said, gesturing to Eremiel. She tried to take advantage of Dean's natural inclination to step in the way of her and boys. "He's, like, freakishly perfect. Aren't you worried about us being together pretty much every day, all the time, with no supervision from you two?"

Dean was starting to look more entertained than anything else. Clearly, he was pleased that she was annoyed by the angel and not dazzled by him like he was afraid she'd be. "Nope. Because I've already informed Eremiel here that if he tries anything I'm going to shove my angel blade so far up his ass that—"

"Dean," Sam cut him off reproachfully.

Seeing that she was going to get no help from Sam or Dean, Sophie turned to look at Eremiel. _Really_ look at him, past the physical attractiveness and angelic bravado. He looked confident, and strong, and focused, and intimidating. And while at first glance he just looked like some punk kid trying to be charming and suave, Sophie could see past the crap and into the steely determination in his expression. He was, like Cas, a true angel warrior.

And she knew that, despite the hell it would probably mean for her, _she _would be the idiot if she didn't accept his guardianship.

Finally, she turned to Cas. "Okay. Fine. So let's say I agree to this whole thing. What does that even mean?"

Cas stood up, standing between Eremiel and Sophie. "There is a small binding ritual. It makes it so that Eremiel will be able to sense certain things about you. Similar to the way I can sense when you are extremely distressed, but much stronger. He can feel how you feel, but also feel the situation around you, and understand and identify conflict or danger before they are present."

"So he…he doesn't have to be physically around me all the time?" she asked tentatively.

"C'mon, I'm not _that _bad," Eremiel cut in, sounding insulted. "I even smell nice."

"No, he doesn't need to be around you all the time," Cas said, ignoring him. "But he will be attending school with you. For Sam and Dean's peace of mind, if nothing else."

Sophie nodded. "Okay. Great. Wonderful." She walked right up to Eremiel and poked him in the shoulder. "Listen up, buddy. You are not going to keep making fun of my friends. You are not going to interfere in my life anymore than you have to. I'm doing this so _they_," she said, pointing towards Sam and Dean, "will let me go to school and be a semi-normal person. Are we clear?"

Eremiel's grin was surprisingly genuine. "I hear you loud and clear, Sophia Winchester."

She nodded. "Good." Then she turned to Cas. "Alright. Let's…let's get me a guardian angel."

Cas nodded, looking over to Sam and Dean, who quickly gave him accompanying nods of approval. Sophie glanced sideways at her dad and uncle. Both of them looked unsettled and a little anxious, which she supposed was natural. But something about the way they held themselves also told her they weren't regretting this decision. They truly believed this would offer her some safety.

And if they believed it, then so did she.

* * *

In just a few minutes, Cas had set up the ritual site. There was an offering bowl that sat on top of something he wrote in Enochian, and a small lit candle. Sophie sat cross legged to Cas' right, and Eremiel sat to Cas' left.

Sophie was staring down at the bowl as Cas added some weird looking herbs to it, but she could feel Eremiel's eyes on her at every moment. She felt overwhelmed by everything happening, and a little scared at the prospect of being bonded to this virtual stranger, but for some reason, the knowledge that he was looking at her didn't freak her out; instead, it calmed her, like his line of sight was something steady that she could hold onto.

Maybe she was crazy. Maybe she was just latching onto whatever kept her from freaking out. But either way, there was something natural about Eremiel being there, ready to bind himself to her. Maybe she was simply _meant _to have a guardian angel.

Cas said a few words in an odd language, which Sophie thought she could distinguish as Enochian. Then he pulled a blade out of the pocket of his trench coat and looked at Sophie. "Your hand," he said, a tiny apology in his eyes.

"These dumb things always need blood, don't they," she grumbled, but still she nodded, pushing her hand out without a second thought. Cas gently took her arm and out of the corner of her eye Sophie saw Dean visibly wince as the knife passed over the palm of her hand. She watched as blood flowed from her hand and into the bowl on the ground, and then she looked up and saw that Eremiel was still watching her intently. Hoping her blush was disguised by the dancing candlelight, Cas quickly moved to take Eremiel's outstretched hand, and he recreated the incision on his hand, too. Cas said a few more words in Enochian as Eremiel's blood mixed with hers, and then Cas looked up at Eremiel.

"The Oath, Eremiel," he commanded.

Eremiel nodded, looking up at Sophie and meeting her eyes. She felt compelled to look back at him. "I, Eremiel, angel of the Lord, in the name of God the Father, name myself the guardian of Sophia Marybeth Gardner-Winchester. I will watch over her; I will defend her from harm; I will put her life above my own existence. I hereby commit myself to this bond and to my charge."

Sophie was struck by his voice. Even though the lines were ones he'd obviously memorized and was reciting by rote, there was something in the words that held her attention. There was a gravity in his tone, a sense of purpose, a sense of calm. Like binding himself to her was the most natural thing for him in the world. It mystified her.

Cas looked over at Sophie. "Do you consent to this bond?"

Her heart began to race, and she felt panicked. "Um..." She turned her head to look at Sam and Dean, who both looked at her with unreadable expressions. Sophie knew why they tried not to look one way or the other—they wanted her to choose this on her own, to not be swayed by either of them. She looked back at Eremiel, and her eyes made contact with his, and she felt her panic begin to ease away.

"I do," she said, and she felt sure.

The moment she said the words, she felt a searing pain in her chest, and she gasped in surprise, her hands flying to her heart as her eyes widened with the shock of the hurt.

She didn't notice that Dean was by her side until she heard his voice by her ear. "Cas, what's going on?"

"They are being bound by their souls, Dean," Cas explained. "Any matter regarding the soul isn't necessarily painless."

Sophie gasped again, a few tears sliding down her face. The pain in her chest was white hot, and it felt like it was moving inside of her, like something was being carved in her body. "Dad," she said weakly, and she could feel Dean's hands on her shoulders, pulling her softly against him.

"It's almost over, kiddo," he said. "Just hold on."

And then, as suddenly as the pain had come on, it was gone.

Sophie was shaking, sitting up from Dean's hold and turning back and looking at him. Her scared eyes met his, and he was searching her for any sign of damage. "Is that…is that it?"

Dean looked to Cas, still down in his crouched position by Sophie. "Is it, Cas?"

Cas glanced over at Eremiel. "You tell me?"

Sophie lifted her head to look at Eremiel, and for the first time, he wasn't looking back at her. His eyes were closed, and he looked like he was concentrating deeply. And when she looked at him, she could feel a strange thrumming in her chest, like her heart was pounding on more than one wavelength.

And then his eyes were open, and he was staring at Sophie in utter awe.

She nearly recoiled from his gaze. That sort of astonishment had not been the look she had been anticipated from the angel who had seemed hellbent on being a dick to her before. He opened his mouth slowly, as if trying to find words to say. And then, finally, "I understand now."

The five of them sat in silence for moment. "You understand what?" Sophie eventually asked quietly.

"Why they wanted you to have a guardian," he said. "Why Castiel asked if I would let you be my next charge. I can…I can feel the danger you are in, very strongly. The darkness around you is…overwhelming."

Sophie frowned, and she could hear Dean stand up and take a step back behind her, whispering something to Sam that she couldn't hear. "Those are your first words to me as my guardian angel? How encouraging."

For the first time, Eremiel looked a bit angry at her. "Keep in mind, Sophia, that I feel what you feel, and I feel the forces around you that are dark and sinister, and I am ready to combat all of those head on. Would you have me pretend like you don't lead an incredibly dangerous life? Because maybe if you opened your eyes to the danger you're always in, you'd be a little bit better at preventing yourself from almost getting killed!"

Now Sophie was angry. She leaned forward, glaring at the angel in front of her. "You don't know anything about me, buddy!"

"No?" Eremiel said challengingly, rising swiftly to his feet. "Are you sure about that? So you didn't grow up with your mother, jumping from apartment to apartment depending on what she could afford? You didn't think that your life with her was great before she got married and you moved in with the stepfather who hated and hurt you whenever you didn't quite meet his ridiculous standards after your mom died?"

Sophie glared at him. "Oh please. That doesn't prove you know anything about me. That proves that you can ask Cas two questions about me and get a standard answer back."

Eremiel's crossed his arms over his chest, his steady eyes not leaving her angry ones. "Did you know that if you dwell on a memory for long enough, it becomes a part of your soul? There's this one, it's seared into your mind, the one where your stepfather threw you into a china cabinet because you played the piano while he was reading his stupid newspaper, and you were just thirteen and your mom had only been dead for a month—"

"Hey," Dean said in low, threatening voice as he watched a devastated shadow cast itself across Sophie's face. "Watch it."

Eremiel ignored him, his eyes still trained on Sophie, who was shaking with rage. "You didn't find refuge from that bastard you lived with in the idea of the biological father you didn't even know for the first decade and a half of your life? You didn't stumble into the world of the dark and fantastical before you were really ready to do so? Are you _sure _I don't really know you?"

Now Sophie was on her feet, facing Eremiel in fury. "You stop talking! I don't want to hear anymore!"

Her words didn't faze him. "You didn't have an awful understand the gravity of the world you're a part of now? You didn't act like a fool and go off and drink far too much alcohol at a party where it took a demon determined to kill you to save you from a boy who wanted to—"

Sophie's hand lashed out to slap him across the face, but he quickly caught her hand before it could touch him. With surprising gentleness, he dropped it.

"I'm not trying to hurt you," he said calmly. "I'm trying to make you see how dangerous it is to be careless and naïve. I will protect you, Sophia, but I can't protect you from yourself, and after seeing into your soul, I'm afraid that might be your biggest danger."

Sophie's eyes were locked into the green-gray abyss that were Eremiel's eyes, and she could hear the painful sincerity in his voice. He didn't just believe that his words were the truth; he knew it.

Suddenly, Sophie knew that she couldn't be there anymore. Without a word, she turned away from Eremiel and stormed out of the room, not daring to look at anybody else as she left.

When she got to her room, she closed the door tightly and tried to fight back the angry tears she could feel stinging her eyes. She wanted to throw something, or hit something.

What the hell did that angel think? That she was some weak, dumb girl that couldn't tell a demon from a doorknob? She may not have been a full-fledged warrior like her dad and uncle were, but she wasn't helpless. She could look after herself, and she stood a fighting chance against the world. She wasn't ignorant or naïve.

Right?

The longer she thought about it, standing there with her back against her door, a sick feeling began to sink into the pit of her stomach. What if she _was _ignorant and naïve? After all, she had had the feeling that Sam and Dean were hiding something from her for a while now. It was probably stupid of her not to try and figure out what that was.

But she just hadn't wanted to rock the boat. What she and Sam and Dean had going for themselves right now…it was good. It was working. She didn't want that to end.

But maybe she should have been asking some questions. Maybe being kept in the dark was only conducive to getting her killed.

Feeling a tear slip past her eye and down her cheek, which she quickly brushed away, she walked over to her bed and was surprised to see a small, brown paper wrapped package lying on the center of it. Curious, she sniffled once and picked it up into her hands, watching as a small piece of paper fluttered down from on top of it. She grabbed it and looked at the lopsided handwriting on it.

_Just because you don't like me doesn't mean you won't like this. –Remy_

She already knew what would be inside the package when she opened it. There, perched on top of the crinkled paper, was the exact copy of _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall _that she had cast off to the side at the bookstore. She could tell by the little wrinkle in the top right corner of the cover.

She stared at the book for a moment, weighing it in her hand and focusing on that little wrinkle in the corner, and then she burst into tears.

* * *

After Sophie had stomped out of the main room, Dean had taken a step forward towards Eremiel. "You need to watch the way you speak to her," he said in a dangerous voice. "Bringing up what happened to her at that party…that was low."

Eremiel regarded Dean almost coldly. "You haven't told her about Beelzebub."

Dean didn't let the blunt statement throw him. "No, I haven't. There's no reason to worry her until I know for sure there's no way out of my deal with him."

Eremiel shook his head. "You're wrong. Every moment she's in the dark about this, you put her in danger. She never would have gone off to that party and acted so recklessly if she had known you were mixed up in something as serious as this and there was the possibility of someone tailing her. I mean, you have the damn demon that almost killed her locked up in here. If you don't tell her soon, she will find out some other way, and it won't be pretty."

"She won't find out some other way," Dean said in a low voice.

"No?" Eremiel replied. "Then she's going to get hurt again."

Dean was furious. "But that's your job! To keep that from happening!"

The look in Eremiel's eyes wasn't what Dean expected. The angel looked angry, yes, and frustrated, but the dominant emotion on his face was worry. "Like I said, I can protect her from a lot of harm. But not from the harm she brings upon herself. And if she is in the dark about this, she's going to unknowingly do something to get herself killed. And I am not willing to let that happen. I presume that you aren't either."

Dean wanted to throttle the angel, but he realized that maybe he was just furious because he knew on some level that Eremiel was right. "If I tell her…."

"She will be hurt, confused, angry, scared," Eremiel said shortly. "She will ignore you for a while, most likely, and question the relationship you have formed. She will cry; she will be devastated at the thought of losing you. But then she will heal, and she will forgive you, and she will want to do whatever it is that she must do to help you, because she loves you."

Dean was shaken by the intensity of Eremiel's voice. For an angel who looked so young, he sure seemed to carry himself with a lot of wisdom.

"But if you don't tell her, and she finds out some other way," he continued, "she will lash out. She will do something reckless and stupid and put herself into unnecessary danger. And if that pattern continues…Dean, she will die. Beelzebub is not to be trifled with. If he can find even one tiny chink in your armor, he will destroy you and all that you love." The angel's eyes flashed with a certain pain, and Dean had this feeling that he was imagining the death of his charge. "I am begging you. Do not let Sophia be that chink. It will kill the both of you."

And then he disappeared.

**So yeah, Eremiel's kind of intense. More on him this Saturday. ~ Lacey :)**


	52. Chapter 52: A Heavenly Runny Nose

_Chapter 52: A Heavenly Runny Nose_

The night before the first day of school, Sophie still hadn't talked to Sam or Dean about the whole Eremiel situation.

She'd pretty much shut herself up in her room, coming out only when she needed to grab something to eat. Except that wasn't often, because she had practically no appetite. Outside of just being upset at the whole situation, she was feeling weird. She was jumpy and unsettled, a little feverish and sickly, and plagued with the perpetual notion that she wasn't alone. She still felt the same sensation that she'd felt when Cas had finished the binding ritual, that feeling that her heartbeat was happening on two planes or in two universes, like each pounding of her most vital organ was echoing against someone else's.

Sam and Dean had been giving her space. They'd had a long talk with Cas, and he had assured them that it was normal for her to be overwhelmed for the first few days. It was no normal thing to have your soul connected to someone else's, especially when that someone else was an angel.

But Dean was still worried. It wasn't like Sophie to be so distant and despondent. She was usually so bright and eager to interact with the nearest living person around her. And now she hadn't said much more than a "Yes," "No," or "Uh huh," to either him or Sam in the last forty-eight hours. And it was starting to concern him.

So, the night before her first day of junior year, he knocked on her bedroom door. She didn't say anything, and so he let out a breath, remembered that he needed to at least try to be patient, and then he knocked again. "Sophie? Soph, can I come in?"

Again, there was no response.

He closed his eyes for a second. Patience, he told himself. Patience. "I'm going to come in now," he said. When he heard nothing to the contrary, he turned the knob and stepped in.

She was lying in bed on her side, her red-gold hair splayed out around her head, green eyes open and a little vacant. "I have to go to sleep," she said listlessly. "School's tomorrow."

Dean sat down on the bed next to her. "Talk to me, Soph, c'mon."

"No."

"Soph," he tried again. "I don't know how to help you if you won't say anything to me. I'm kind of worried about you here. So is Sam."

Sophie blinked. "I'm tired, Dad."

"Soph," he said, reaching over her to gently push back a few strands of her hair. He wasn't planning on leaving until she decided to talk to him. When his fingers grazed the skin of her forehead, though, his eyebrows immediately knitted together. "Jesus, Soph, you're burning up."

"I'm running a slight fever," she replied despondently.

"Slight, my ass," Dean said, pressing his hand to her forehead. "This can't be normal."

"Nothing about this is normal," she said.

"I'm serious, Sophie," Dean said, his voice taking on a more serious tone. "Sit up."

"Just let me be miserable."

"You can be as damn miserable as you want at a temperature of 98.6. Until then, we need to check your temperature and call Cas."

"Dad, stop being a mom."

Dean gave Sophie a look. "Lose the attitude, Sophie, you're about half a degree from spontaneously combusting. Now seriously, get up."

Groaning, Sophie sat up, her hair disheveled from days in bed, the oversized Black Sabbath T-shirt she'd stolen from Dean sliding off one of her shoulders. Her face was flushed, her eyes shiny with fever. Dean pressed his hand against her forehead again, trying not to chuckle as she rolled her eyes. He was taken back to a time when he used to do this for Sam whenever he was sick, and he would push back his younger brother's shaggy hair and be really obnoxious about pretending to be motherly. Sam would grumble and groan as Dean force-fed him medicine, and he would be annoying and insufferable and then at the end, when he was tucked comfortably into bed under the influence of over-the-counter medicine, he would mumble, "Thank you." Dean had lived for those thank-you's. And maybe it had been a bit selfish, but he'd almost enjoyed when Sam was sick. Dean could help him heal from a cold or the flu; he was helpless, though, when it came to healing him from a broken life.

Except right now, this wasn't like when Sam had been sick as a kid. Sophie wasn't sick. She was experiencing side effects of being magically hitched to her guardian angel.

"Up," he commanded, standing and motioning for her to do the same.

"Dad," she argued.

"I'm serious, Sophie. Get up."

She glared at him and then stood up from her bed. The moment she was on her own two feet, her head was in her hands.

"What's up?" Dean asked, eyes narrowed.

"My head is killing me," she moaned. "And I feel dizzy."

Dean was quiet for a moment, trying to figure out what might be wrong with her. "Let's go to the kitchen and get you some water and maybe a couple Advil, whataya say?"

She nodded slowly. "Okay," she replied quietly.

She took two steps forward, and then her knees buckled and she pitched forward towards the ground.

"Soph!" Dean reacted quickly, grabbing her around the middle and lowering her to the floor before she could crash down. He pressed the back of his hand to her cheek, and it felt like it was on fire, but she was shivering like she was standing in a snowstorm. Now he was worried. "Sam!" he called out, looking down at Sophie's face. Her eyes were closed, a thin sheen of cold sweat glistened on her forehead, and she appeared to have fainted. Her trembling was starting to scare Dean, and he quickly pulled her towards him, not sure how on earth he could both keep her warm and try to knock down her fever. "Sam, get in here!"

There was a sound of fast paced footsteps, and then the door was opening. "Jesus," Sam said when he came in. "What happened?"

Dean looked helpless and a bit defensive. "I don't know. I came in to talk to her and she was burning up. So I told her to get up and come get some medicine or something and the moment she was on her feet she just looked awful and then…this."

"We need to call Cas," Sam said immediately.

"Damn right we need to call Cas!" Dean exclaimed. "This wasn't supposed to happen!"

Before either of them could reach for their cell phones, there was a familiar _whooshing _of wings. But when they turned, they weren't looking at Cas.

"Eremiel," Sam said.

"Sam, Dean," the angel replied, addressing them, but his green-gray eyes were focused solely on Sophie. "She's not doing well."

"You were valedictorian of your angel class, weren't you, smart guy?" Dean snapped.

Eremiel ignored his jibe. "There are a few cases of this happening to a charge after binding rituals. Acute stress combined with a guardian angel partnership not sanctioned by God will sometimes…have side effects."

Sam turned his surprisingly sharp gaze to Eremiel. The look on his face meant that clearly, he was not entertained by this new information. "Partnership not sanctioned by God? What the hell does that mean?"

Eremiel was still looking at Sophie, as if trying to figure out what was best to do with her. "Most guardian angels and their charges, from the beginning of time to the end of time, have been predetermined and preapproved by God, way back before he jumped ship. There's a list of those names ingrained into every guardian angel's mind... Similar to how all angels have the names of every prophet ingrained into their minds. But sometimes, in emergency situations such as these, a guardian angel is partnered with a human without God's stamp of approval. And on occasion, it is a bit harder for the human to acclimate to the bond."

"You know, I thought regular angels were pretty damn complicated and annoying," Dean glowered, his eyes still on the shivering form of his daughter, "but you guardians take it to a whole other level."

Eremiel nodded, shrugging slightly. "I won't disagree with you. I went through a period of my life where I wished I could have just been a boring, low-grade angel with a desk job. But, you know, when life gives you lemons."

Dean just looked at the angel in surprise.

"What?" Eremiel shot at him defensively.

"Nothing," Dean responded. "That's just…possibly the most human thing I've ever heard an angel say."

Eremiel shrugged. "We guardian angels spend a majority of our lives being intrinsically connected to humans. They've rubbed off on us in more ways than one." He bent down and inspected Sophie, gently placing a hand on her head and staring at her for a long time. "She's not well," he finally said, his voice lower, as if speaking to himself.

Dean narrowed his eyes. "Do I need to repeat the valedictorian thing? Because that's the kind of joke that doesn't really have enough meat to be funny a second time—"

"No, she's _really_ not well," Eremiel interrupted sharply, lifting his head to look at Dean, sounding anxious. Sam and Dean looked over at him, their expressions darkening. "This is an angelic illness."

"Excuse me?" Sam snapped.

"Angels don't get sick," Dean tried, shaking his head. "They're freaking angels."

"There are technically all sorts of illnesses that are exclusively angelic," Eremiel explained. "We're just immune to them all. And this one, it's …it's like Heaven's version of the common cold. But when humans get it…it's bad."

Dean looked down at the pained face of his daughter, feeling a spike of fear in his chest. "How do we fix her?"

"You can't," Eremiel said offhandedly, almost in a bored voice, not taking his eyes off her. "If she remains like this for much longer, her organs will give out, her body will slowly shut down, and she will die."

Sam lashed out before Dean could even wrap his mind around what the angel had said. "Well that can't happen!" he yelled. "We need to fix her!"

"I said that _you _can't fix her," Eremiel said in a placating voice, like he was speaking to children. "But the cure is simple enough, if the right person does it."

"Well what are you waiting for, smartass?" Dean snapped. "Do whatever it is you need to do!"

"Do you mind stepping back for a moment?" Eremiel asked Dean calmly, looking up at him. "I need to pick her up."

"Well I could do it," Dean muttered gruffly, but he gently switched Sophie off to Eremiel.

The angel stood, lifting Sophie in his arms. Her head fell onto his chest, and even though she was unconscious her eyes were still scrunched tightly in pain. "I need to take her to Heaven," he declared. "It's the only place she can be cured."

"Woah." Dean immediately was back on his feet, standing next to his brother, and they both wore the exact same expression, which clearly reflected their intense distaste at the idea of the angel flying Sophie to Heaven. "No no no. You are not taking my kid upstairs."

"It won't take long," Eremiel said, shrugging. "And honestly, I wasn't asking for your permission."

And then with a devil-may-care grin and a rustling of wings, he and Sophie were gone.

Dean stared at where the angel had just been. And then he glanced over at Sam. "Did that douchebag just kidnap my daughter?"

"I…I think he did," Sam replied, looking just as shocked.

"And he _smiled_ at me," Dean mumbled, annoyed. "He actually smiled at me. Like some smartass teenager."

"That's probably because he is the angel version of a smartass teenager," Sam responded, frowning.

"No," Dean grumbled. "Did you hear the way he talked to us? He's the angel version of _me_. And I'm pretty freaking sure I don't like that the angel version of me has his soul super-glued to Sophie's, because I'm sort of a big enough of a dick on my own before throwing on a halo and wings."

Sam just stood there, arms crossed. "Should we be worried? Because an angel we've known less than a week just flew Sophie to Heaven, and to be honest, that kind of doesn't sit very well with me."

"I don't know," Dean finally said. "I mean, you saw her. She looked terrible. And Cas has faith in him, and usually Cas is right about these things."

"So you're okay with this?"

"Of course not!" Dean snapped. "But I'm less okay with Sophie kicking the bucket from some weird angel disease, so I'm prioritizing."

Sam was about to respond when suddenly, Eremiel was back, along with Sophie. Except this time, she was standing next to him, the picture of health.

And also, it seemed, the picture of annoyance.

"A simple 'Hey, Soph, I'm taking you _off of the freaking planet_' would have been nice!" she exclaimed, glaring at Eremiel in frustration. "Instead all of a sudden I wake up and everything's white and some angel with creepy doctor utensils is all up in my face!"

Eremiel rolled his eyes. "I mean, I only saved your life. It's not like any thanks is in order or anything."

"You didn't save my life," Sophie snapped. "Binding your soul to mine is what made me sick in the first place!"

Dean cleared his throat. "Glad to see you're feeling better, Soph."

She whirled on him, livid. "And you! You let the_ angel _teleport me to Heaven? What kind of dad does that?"

"The dad that has no clue how to cure freaking angel-pox."

"It was a simple cold," Eremiel defended, looking mildly amused at the whole situation.

"A cold that was killing her," Dean snapped.

"And now it's not," Eremiel replied with a shrug.

"Enough!" Sophie exclaimed. She turned to the angel. "Look, thank you for curing my heavenly runny nose—"

"You fainted trying to walk to your door," Eremiel pointed out.

"—but I still have to go to school tomorrow, and you need to go so I can get some sleep."

Eremiel looked at her. "Okay. You _should _rest. That sickness takes it out of you."

She crossed her arms over her chest. "I'll be fine, Eremiel. Now go, you probably have to go figure out how to pass as a human high school student anyway."

"You'd be surprised," the angel said, giving her a charming grin. "And I'd much prefer if you called me Remy."

He gave her a quick wink, and then he was gone.

Immediately after the angel disappeared, Dean stood in front of Sophie, gently grabbing her face with his hand and turning it to the left and right. "Are you okay? Did they, like, probe you or something up there?"

Sophie looked startled. "He took me to Heaven, Dad, not the mothership. Would you let go of my face, this is weird."

He let go of her, staring at her. "What about the sickness? How are you feeling? Dizzy? Lightheaded? Feverish?"

"My head still hurts a little bit, and I still feel weird," she admitted. "But not about-to-collapse weird."

"Good," Dean said, taking a step back. "That's good."

Sam cleared his throat. "Soph, I'm going to get you that water and those painkillers now, if you still want them."

"That'd be great, Sam, thanks," Sophie said, making her way back to her bed.

Sam left, and Dean still stood there, looking at her. "So you're sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine, really," she replied, crawling under her covers and curling up into a ball. "Still sort of weirded out by this Eremiel situation, but…that's just going to take time, you know?"

"Yeah," Dean said, feeling himself starting to calm down again. God, he needed to stop getting so worked up whenever anything slightly off kilter happened with Sophie. One of these days he was just going to drop dead of a heart attack. "Yeah, okay, that's good."

She shook her head, and for the first time in days, Dean saw a small grin on her face. "I can't believe I just saw Heaven."

Dean frowned. "Don't let the fact that it's Heaven fool you. Some of the biggest dicks in existence are from there."

She looked disappointed. "I mean, I know, but it's still kind of nice to know that when you die you're not…gone."

Before Dean could respond, Sam poked his head back in. "Hey Soph, here're your meds."

He tossed her a bottle of water and a bottle of painkillers, which she sat up and caught deftly. "Thanks, doc," she replied gratefully.

"I've gotta go call Cas and ask him about something," Sam said. "You got it from here, Dean?"

"No, Sam, I can't handle the five foot four, hundred and five pound teenage girl in her pajamas who just had angel fever," Dean said, shooting his brother a look. "You might need to stay as backup."

Sam just rolled his eyes and slipped away.

Half a water bottle and three painkillers later, Sophie had curled back into her usual ball in her bed. Dean was tapping one of the keys on her keyboard as she tightened the covers around her. "You play this a lot, don't you?" he asked.

"Yeah, I guess, sometimes," her soft voice fluttered over his shoulder.

"How come I never hear you?" Dean asked, suddenly curious.

Sophie rolled over in her bed. "I plug headphones in usually. I don't really like people to hear. I'm not exactly a prodigy, I just sort of play it sometimes to unwind."

Dean pressed one key down for five seconds, listening as the note rang out and then faded into oblivion. "I've been meaning to ask you," he started offhandedly, "during that ritual, when Eremiel said your name…he said your middle name was Marybeth."

He saw Sophie's head nod into the pillow. "Yeah. That's my middle name. You didn't know?"

"No," he replied honestly. "I can't believe I never asked. It just…it never came up, I guess."

Sophie didn't say anything, and for a moment, Dean thought she wasn't going to say anything at all. Then, "Mom wanted me to carry some part of you with me when I was born, even though you weren't there," she said quietly. "And she remembered you mentioning that your mother's name was Mary. And her mother's name was Beth, so…. Marybeth."

Dean felt the strangest rush of grief hit him. It was the most disconcerting combination of humble gratitude and admiration for the incredible woman that Sophie's mother had been, and hopeless sadness at not being a part of Sophie's life for the first fifteen years. He desperately wished it was all different, that the story could have had a different first chapter.

He pushed the feeling away, quietly tapping an odd beat between a black key and a white key. He cleared his throat, promptly squashing the odd lump that had begun to form there. "Listen," he said as he drummed on the instrument. "I know you don't want to talk about this whole guardian angel thing yet. I get that. Just…when you do, I'm here. You know that, right?"

He could hear Sophie sit up, and he looked back at her. "I know that," she said. "Of course I know that."

"You just haven't really talked in a few days," he said lamely.

She shrugged. "Angel fever, remember?"

"Right," Dean said uncomfortably, lifting his hand from the keys. "Well. Okay then." He walked over to her door. "Get some sleep, Soph. It's not every day you have your first day of junior year."

Her grin immediately lightened his mood. "Bet you never thought you'd say that."

Dean gave a low chuckle. "You're right about that." He looked at her for two more seconds, and then he just shook his head, grinning. "Goodnight, Sophie."

"Night, Dad."

**We're slowly getting back into a rhythm with these guys! It won't last forever, but it's fun and sweet while it does!**

**Also, I've decided to answer a couple questions you guys have asked me in reviews. I will probably do so at the end of the next chapter, so if anyone is just dying to know something about this story, let me know and we'll see if I can answer it. Also, always feel free to PM me anything, I pretty much always will respond back!**

**Thanks for all the love and positive vibes for this story, my friends! ~ Lacey :)**


	53. Chapter 53: Angel On Her Shoulder

_Chapter 53: Angel On Her Shoulder_

The next morning, Sophie was feeling a lot better. She still was plagued by that uncomfortable feeling that she wasn't alone in her own mind, but it was a sensation that was becoming a little bit more familiar to her, and she had faith that soon enough it would be normal for her.

So she got up, feeling refreshed but still a little amazed that the night before, she'd actually been in Heaven. Trying not to think too much about it, she quickly went to her closet and pulled out her favorite pair of jeans and a light blue sleeveless blouse. She threw them on, went into her bathroom to toss her hair up into a ponytail and brush some mascara over her lashes, and then pulled on the white Converse she had thrown lazily into the corner behind her bed. Then she quickly grabbed the backpack she had packed the night before and made her way to the kitchen.

Sam was in there, in the process of making coffee. He looked up as she walked in. "Morning," he said. "How're you feeling?"

"Like a high school junior," she said brightly. "And like I no longer have the angel plague."

Her uncle grinned. "Good to hear," he said. "So, what's on the agenda for my favorite high schooler? What classes are you taking?"

"Favorite high schooler? I'm honored," Sophie laughed. Then she pursed her lips together, trying to reccall her class schedule. "I think I've got... Calc II, physics, European history, Advanced Latin II, American lit, journalism, and some dumb photography class I have to take to fulfill my elective requirement."

Sam grinned. "Who knows, maybe you'll like it?"

"Not a chance," Sophie grumbled. "I don't want to take pictures. I want to read and write. That's why I'm taking two English classes."

"It's good to step outside your comfort zone every now and then," Sam said, grabbing the coffee pot and pouring some into a mug for himself before passing it to Sophie.

She gave him a look as she grabbed her favorite chipped mug from the cabinet and filled it to the brim with coffee. "I have stepped more out of my comfort zone in the last year than anybody has ever stepped out of their comfort zone ever," she said matter-of-factly.

"Touché," Sam admitted, eyeing her brew. "Maybe you want to cram a little less coffee into that mug?"

"Maybe you want try rephrasing that sentence so it doesn't sound as idiotic as I think it did."

He snorted. "Fine. But the amount of caffeine you drink is going to stunt your growth."

"Not a chance," Sophie said. "My mom was five foot eight and my dad is six foot one. And you're a giant. I've got another two or three inches left to go at the very least, just based off genetics."

Sam just shook his head. "You are not allowed to pull a Dean move and just skate through your life on the fact that you happened to win a genetic lottery."

Sophie shrugged. "Kind of a blessing and a curse, isn't it though? Being a Winchester?"

Sam gave a low laugh, the kind that echoed with years of memories. "You got that right," he muttered.

She sighed, taking a long drink of her coffee and looking at her phone for the time. "How is Dean not awake right now?" she asked. "It's seven twenty."

"He's awake," Sam said. "But he's with Cas and Eremiel, figuring out how to pass him off as a human high school student. They're getting his papers and stuff figured out."

At the mention of Eremiel, Sophie felt a nervous churning in her stomach. "Oh."

Sam looked at her curiously. "How're you feeling about this whole thing?"

"Fine." He raised an eyebrow, and she tried again. "I mean, it's weird. And Eremiel is…."

"The angel version of Dean?" Sam offered.

She nodded. "That is the perfect way to put it. He's so infuriating, and any time he's in the room I feel like going at his throat, and then he'll say something to show that he's actually pretty serious, and…I don't know, it's just weird."

Sam grinned. "Well, luckily, you just have to deal with him at school."

"I guess," she sighed. She decided against telling him about that weird, constant feeling she had that she wasn't ever alone, that someone was perpetually there with her. That she truly had a little angel on her shoulder. It wasn't exactly something she could explain very well, anyway, so there was no need to worry Sam about it.

She glanced at her phone again and groaned, downing as much of the coffee as she could before grabbing a travel mug out of the cabinet and dumping the remainder of her cup into it, and then topping it off with fresh coffee from the pot. "I need to head over there now so I can set up my locker and renew my parking pass and stuff. See you after school?"

"Yep," he said, grabbing his coffee mug and his newspaper. She could see a couple articles on it had been circled, and she had the feeling it wouldn't be long before he and Dean left for another case. "Have a good time."

She shifted the strap of her backpack and grinned at him. "Thanks."

She turned to go, and then she heard Sam add, "And Sophie?"

Her head turned to look back over her shoulder. "Yeah?"

Sam just grinned at her. "If Eremiel gives you any trouble, just let me know. I can probably take care of it without an angel blade, like Dean would."

She laughed. "Will do. See ya later!"

And with that, she slid out of the kitchen and made her way to her car.

* * *

There was fifteen minutes before the first class of her junior year. Sophie had organized her locker just as she'd liked it, renewed her parking pass, and had even managed to sign up for cross country tryouts. So she did what any sixteen-year-old girl with fifteen spare minutes would do.

She made out with her boyfriend in the parking lot.

She'd made the decision to call Jack her boyfriend in an instant. She'd been walking back out to her car to put her parking pass sticker on her front windshield when she saw Jack doing the same for his car across the parking lot. And she thought about everything crazy and insane that she'd been through in the last week, and suddenly, she just knew.

So she walked up to him, a look of determination on her face. "Hey! Jack!" she called out as she neared his car.

He looked up at her voice, smiling when he saw her, and then his smile waned when he saw the focus on her face. "What's up, S?"

She stood in front of him, arms crossed. "I want to be your girlfriend."

Jack looked shocked. "Huh?"

"I want to be your girlfriend," she repeated. "I want you to be my boyfriend. I want to put a label on this. And maybe that's needy or whatever but I don't care, I just want—"

And then he'd grabbed her arms, which unwound from around herself and immediately wrapped around him, and he pushed her against the driver's side door of his car, and they kissed.

They were in plain sight. They were probably being annoying. They were the epitome of the couple Sophie usually hated, the kind that didn't care about anyone else's comfort level. But in that moment, she couldn't care less. All she cared about was the fact that Jack's hands were in her hair, and that was possibly the sexiest feeling she had ever experienced in her short, relatively romance-less sixteen years. All she could feel was Jack's mouth on hers and the cool metal of the car she was being pushed back onto.

She was a teenager. She was making out with her boyfriend in the parking lot of their high school. This was the most human, normal thing she could possibly be doing.

And that's when she heard the engine.

It was a deep rumble that seemed to shake the very air around her, and she could feel the thrumming in her heart. At first she thought it was the excitement from kissing Jack; after all, kissing him made her feel a million different things all at once, and certainly a vibrating excitement had to be one of them. But then the rumbling grew louder, and then she heard people whispering. So many people in the parking lot were whispering that it was actually audible over the sound of the engine. And so finally, Jack and Sophie broke apart to see what the commotion was.

And there, pulled up right next to Jack's car, was a guy on a motorcycle.

He wore jeans that looked almost too perfect on him and a hunter green Henley shirt, along with worker boots. A backpack was swinging from one of the handlebars, and a flask was tucked into a pocket on the side of the vehicle. The guy sitting on the bike still had his dark helmet on, but it was obvious he was looking directly at them.

Jack was the first to speak, and he was peeved. "Why don't you go stare at some other couple and leave me and my girlfriend alone," he snapped. "We're sort of in the middle of something."

With that, the biker lifted his hands up to remove his helmet. And when he did, Sophie knew that she should've known.

Eremiel looked at her, eyes alit with amusement. She tried not to notice that his shirt really seemed to bring out the green in his green-gray eyes. "Girlfriend?" he asked lightly, a grin playing at his lips. "Well, that's a development."

Sophie had no idea what to say to him in front of Jack, so she just looked back at her boyfriend, mouth open, speechless. Jack, having recognized the boy in front of him and now reaching the point of anger, glared at him. "I take it you go here now."

"You take it correctly," Eremiel said. He knocked the kickstand down, offering Jack a smooth grin. "I didn't get to meet you properly the last time I bumped into you. I'm Remy. Remy Angel."

If it was possible to choke and roll your eyes at the same time, Sophie achieved it. "You've got to be kidding me," she breathed, but Jack didn't seem to hear. He was too busy glaring.

"Jack," he said shortly. "Now if you'll excuse us, we were kind of busy."

"Yeah, I can see that," he said, looking at Sophie and grinning at her. She shifted her gaze away from him. "Well, I'm sure I'll see you around. Bye Jack. Sophie."

And then he hopped on his bike, kicked up the kickstand, and made his way to an open parking spot.

Jack turned to her, and she'd never seen him look so annoyed. "Why does he have to be coming here? New people _never _come to Lebanon, and when they do, they're usually much less obnoxious than him."

Sophie shook her head. "Don't worry about him. He's just trying to get under your skin."

"But why?" Jack asked. "All I ever did was walk into the same bookshop as him. And I mean, not that you're not totally worth fighting over, but it can't be because of you, because he doesn't even _know _you."

It suddenly struck Sophie that Jack had no clue. She hadn't told him a single thing about her whole guardian angel situation, or about how the only reason Remy had entered their lives was because of her. She wasn't sure _how_ to tell him either, especially when he was this riled up.

"Who cares," she finally said. "Just don't let him win. Now c'mon, _boyfriend_, class starts in five."

* * *

Sam, Dean, and Cas hadn't been messing around, which Sophie soon discovered when she found out Eremiel was in every single one of her classes.

She thought that maybe it was just a coincidence that he was in her first two classes, because a lot of juniors were in physics and American lit. And she hadn't minded that, because she'd been able to sit far enough away from him to pretend that maybe he didn't exist. But when he showed up in her Advanced Latin II class, which had a total of five students enrolled in it, she figured it out. Not to mention it was difficult to not sit close to him in a class that had the number of students she could literally count off on one hand.

The Latin teacher, Dr. Krantz, walked in just as the bell rang. "_Salve_, class," he said cheerfully as he walked in. "Welcome to another year of Latin!"

The three other kids in the class, all seniors that had been in Sophie's class the year before, completely ignored Dr. Krantz and were studying Eremiel. The whispers had been following him all day long. It was impossible for Sophie to ignore the girls fawning over him, gushing over his eyes and his muscles and his motorcycle. If she was being honest, she couldn't blame them. Regardless of his attractiveness, he just oozed out-of-town badass, and she could see why him turning up at school would cause a bit of a ruckus.

But just because she understood it didn't mean she had to like it.

Dr. Krantz made his way to the front of the class, adjusting his glasses and clasping his thin hands together in front of his chest. "Now, we seem to be quite a small group this year, which I love—more time to cultivate each of your minds individually. Now, if we could go around and introduce ourselves just so we can all get to know each other, that would be great. Mr. Davis, how about we start with you?"

A senior boy named Roy Davis sat up and began to quickly introduce himself, and then the two senior girls in the class, Kendra and Becky, did the same, all while flicking their eyes back and forth between Dr. Krantz and Eremiel. Then it was Sophie's turn to introduce herself, and she quickly said, "I'm Sophie. I'm a junior. I'm on student government and I'm thinking of running track and cross country this year."

"You forgot your fun fact," Dr. Krantz prodded.

Sophie resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "Um…." _I'm the daughter of a man who regularly hunts monsters, stopped the apocalypse, and is best friends with an angel. Also, my soul is connected to the soul of a guardian angel. Oh, and recently, I took a quick trip to Heaven to cure my angelic illness, but don't worry, I don't think I'm contagious._ "I know how to sing the alphabet backwards."

She saw the corner of Eremiel's lips twitch upward at that, but she tried not to notice.

"Fascinating, fascinating. And how about our newest addition to the Buffalo family?" Dr. Krantz asked, looking at Eremiel.

He leaned back in his chair, that same old classic grin on his face. "I'm Remy Angel. I just moved here from San Francisco. I, too, am thinking of running track and cross country this year. And my fun fact…." He trailed, glancing at Sophie for half a second before looking back to Dr. Krantz and saying the next sentence in the most dead serious voice she imagined he could muster. "I'm _terrified _of flying."

Sophie again had to fight the urge to roll her eyes.

"A very common phobia, Mr. Angel," Dr. Krantz said, nodding. "Well, now that we're all familiar with each other, this year in Latin…."

Sophie found it incredibly difficult to focus on everything Dr. Krantz said in class that day, in between her own rambling thoughts and Kendra and Becky whispering back and forth to each other as they snuck glances at Remy.

No, _Eremiel_. Sophie shook her head. She had to separate the hot teenager she saw at school from the angel she was tethered to. She had to remind herself that _Remy _was actually thousands of years old most likely, and not human, and just generally so far removed from reality that she would never have allowed him into her daily life if her safety hadn't been contingent upon it. He was _Eremiel_. An _angel_. Not Remy. Remy wasn't real. Remy was a mask that Eremiel wore so that he could blend in with teenaged humans.

She tried to hammer that into her mind as she stared with glazed eyes at the Latin words Dr. Krantz was writing on the board, and when the bell rang signaling the end of class, she quickly grabbed her backpack and dashed out the door.

To no avail, however. Eremiel stopped her before she could get two feet away from the door. "Sophia," he started.

"Okay, first of all," she said as she turned towards him, grabbing the straps of her backpack so that her hands had an outlet for her annoyance, "I don't like being called Sophia. It's Sophie."

"Well, I don't like being called Eremiel, but you are determined to keep calling me it anyway," he said, looking down at her with an almost curious look on his face.

"That's because the only reason you have another name is because your real name sounds too heavenly," she snapped.

He cocked his head to the side, his eyes still filled with that curiosity. "No, actually, I've always preferred Remy. For the last few hundred years, at least. I like human names more than angel ones. Just like I tend to like humans more than angels."

Sophie was quiet for a moment. "Fine. Remy it is then."

"Thanks," he said with a grin. "_Sophie_."

She nodded. "Well, I take it you're in all my classes. And apparently joining track?"

"Just being thorough," he said with a wink.

Sophie scowled. "This is ridiculous. I know that you can sense everything about me from wherever you are. Why do you need to be in the same room as me?"

"It's not exactly a necessity, I guess. But I can't sense _everything _about you," he reasoned. "It's not like I can read your mind. I just…your heart beats in tune with me. When your soul brightens, so does mine, and when it dims, I can feel the darkness. When you're in pain, I'm in pain. It's why I knew when you were sick after our binding ritual. It's a unique sensation. But I would never claim to know everything about you, Sophie Winchester." She was speechless, and was about to try and force something out of her mouth when he added, "Although I will say, that whole bit about you knowing the alphabet backwards…_that _was a surprising piece of information. Really, I knew I was signing on for some serious stuff when I agreed to be your guardian angel, but _that_..."

Reluctantly, she grinned. "Well, I couldn't give them my _real _fun fact," she said.

"And what would that be?" Remy asked.

She gave him a look. "Wouldn't you love to know? Now come on, we're going to be late for this dumb photography class."

And with that, she turned around and walked away, knowing full well that Remy trailed right behind her.

* * *

At lunch, Sophie sat at her usual table with Harry, Jamie, and Jack. It had been a while since they had all been together like this, since Harry had been touring colleges all summer and Sophie had been off killing monsters with Sam and Dean. Jack and Jamie had stayed back, working their respective jobs, Jack at Busboys and Brew and Jamie at a little clothing boutique called Pink Aphrodite.

But now they were all back together, and they were chatting and catching up and mostly ignoring their lunches, when out of the corner of her eye she saw Remy enter the lunchroom.

She watched, trying to divide her attention between him and Jamie's story about a particularly unruly customer she'd faced over the summer, staring as Remy went through the cafeteria line, picking up an apple and a sandwich. The scene was so bizarre to her, an angel going through a high school cafeteria line, waiting his turn in between the school stoner and the captain of the girls' volleyball team. Speaking of the latter, the girl kept looking back at him, looking up at him from underneath her dark lashes, and Sophie was baffled. If any of these people knew what Remy was, they'd be running away from him screaming. Instead, he was being ogled like some sort of specimen.

"Hello, Sophie? Are you listening?"

She reverted her attention back to Jamie. "Yeah, of course. You said the customer tried to pay you for the hundred dollar dress in nickels."

Jamie sighed. "I said that five minutes ago."

"Oh," Sophie said, looking ashamed. "I'm sorry, I'm just zoning out today."

Jack was looking at her oddly, and she knew he was worried about her. She had to admit, she hadn't exactly been honest with him about everything, and not just the whole Remy thing. She kept most of the details of her hunting trip with Sam and Dean to a bare minimum, and she hadn't told him anything about the run in with the vampires or the whole deal with her favorite demon Taylor. She didn't want to freak him out more than he likely already had been. But it was clear he knew there was much more going on than she was telling him, and while he hadn't pushed her, the concern was clear as day on his face.

She felt horrible. The only upside to Jack knowing about the monsters of the world was that she had someone to talk to about it all, and now she was hiding stuff from him. And now he was her boyfriend.

She was less than five hours into her very first relationship and she was already the worst girlfriend ever.

It took a bit of effort, but she tried to focus in on the conversation they were having. She was vaguely aware of Remy being ushered over to sit at a table exclusively reserved for the prettiest volleyball players and the hottest jocks, and she tried to ignore the unsettled feeling it brought to her stomach. She tore her eyes away from him, took a long drink from her water bottle, and spent a lot of her energy concentrating on what Harry was saying about Princeton, which seemed to have been his favorite school that he'd visited.

"Princeton," she said, trying to engage herself. "That's a tough one."

"I know," Harry said. "But, I mean, I got a 1550 on my SATs and a 4.6 GPA. I play football and I'm on Mu Alpha Theta, so I'm both an athlete and a mathlete. I work a crappy job mowing lawns on weekends and volunteer every other week at this dumb wildlife center, but admissions officers eat that kind of stuff up." He took a bite of his sandwich thoughtfully, chewing and swallowing deliberately. "Plus, I'm half black, and that is the collegiate golden ticket."

Sophie grinned. "I tracked down the father that never knew I existed after my mom died," she put in. "I think _that _is the collegiate golden ticket. Everyone loves a sob story."

"Well, I'm a white male with married parents that both get a stable income," Jack said proudly. "So basically that means I'm screwed."

Jamie pushed her brother's shoulder lightly. "No, c'mon, we totally have an edge. We're both one of eleven siblings, one of whom is a world famous author. That's the kind of hook a school just can't resist."

Jack pretended to wipe sweat off of his forehead. "Well that's fortunate, God forbid any of us actually work hard enough to _earn_ our way into a good university."

"No, Sophie and Harry actually deserve it," Jamie noted, tucking her sandy hair behind her ear. It had gotten longer over the summer, Sophie noticed, and a little bit lighter, likely due to a few beach trips she'd made. "You and I, dear brother, are not so intellectually inclined."

"Oh please," Sophie said, rolling her eyes. "You two are both ridiculously smart. It's just hard to compare when you have Mr. Ivy League over here rambling on about Princeton and Harvard and Yale like they're his back up colleges or something."

Harry just lifted his hands. "Sue me."

"Hey Sophie, where are you thinking of applying?" Jamie asked, turning towards me. "I mean, you have more time to decide than Harry since he's a senior, but it's close to time to start thinking about it."

"Um…," Sophie started, stumped. "I…I don't know. I guess I haven't really thought about it."

"Well, you should," Jamie said. "You're super smart. You could probably get in anywhere if you tried hard enough.

Sophie shrugged. "Well, I still have another year before I have to start applying, so the pressure isn't exactly on right now."

"But you've gotta have some sort of idea," Jack prodded, and Sophie looked over at him, surprised. Jack had never been the one to be grilling her about her future. "Because you've got to have certain things to put on applications if you want to apply anywhere really rigorous, like part time jobs and service projects and extracurriculars. Those are the kinds of things you need to think about now."

Sophie just gave him a look. "Okay. Well, no need to jump down my throat. It's not like you've been taking a bunch of steps to perfect _your _applications."

"Yeah, well you're going to end up somewhere great," he said quickly. "I just want to make sure you get there. You know, fly the coop."

Sophie looked down at the sandwich she'd barely touched. "I didn't realize it was so important to you that I leave," she grumbled.

Jamie and Harry looked uncomfortable, and Jack seemed to realize that maybe he had misspoken. "I didn't mean that, S," he said, trying to recover. "I just…I know you're attached to your home here and to your family, and—"

"That's sort of the purpose of a home and family, Jack, isn't it?" she asked, trying not to sound too biting. "To be attached to them?" Before he could answer, Sophie just shook her head. "Never mind. Listen, I'm going to go, I want to show up early to my history class so I can get to know the teacher a little bit. I'll see you guys later."

With that she stood up, slung her backpack onto her shoulder, and grabbed her tray. As she started walking away, she could hear Jamie scolding Jack. "What the hell was that about, you idiot?" her friend's voice rang out.

Sophie dumped her tray and made her way out of the cafeteria, feeling tears prick at her eyes. She sniffed once, making her way to her locker. She didn't want anyone to see her cry, especially on the first day of school.

"Sophie!"

She groaned, turning around to see Jack following her out. "Not really feeling like talking right now, Jack," she said, turning back around to continue towards her locker.

She heard him jog to catch up to her, only stopping once he was facing her. "Sophie, I'm sorry. I was acting like a dick in there."

"Yeah, you were," she replied, looking up at him in annoyance. "What was that even about?"

"I just…," Jack started, looking uncomfortable and rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. Then he let out a breath and looked down at Sophie. "Look, S, I'm worried about you. You've been so quiet about your summer, and kind of closed off about the whole…crazy part of your life. And I mean I get that, but I just can't help but think that something over the summer just kind of…clicked."

"Clicked?" Sophie repeated, not knowing where on earth he was going with this. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know, I just…I figured that somewhere over the course of the summer you decided that you wanted to be a hunter," he said quickly. "And I just…I really don't want you to want that, S. I know I should let you what you want, but I just can't do that when what you want has probably the highest mortality rate of any job in the world."

At that, Sophie couldn't help but smile, feeling a little relieved. "Wait, really? That's what you were nervous about?"

Jack looked at her in exasperation. "I mean, yeah! I never know what to think when it comes to you, S, you honestly drive me up a wall and it's just—"

Sophie took a step forward and kissed him right on his over-talkative mouth, and he was so surprised he didn't even kiss her back. She stepped back, grinning at him. "Jack, I don't want to be a hunter. I never will."

His eyes widened. "Really?"

"Really," she laughed. "If my summer taught me anything, it's that being a hunter is the _last _thing I want to be."

He looked relieved. "I just…you've been acting so different recently, and I thought that—"

"A lot has happened," she said, her green eyes lifting to meet his dark blue ones. "And…and I've kept some stuff from you." _A lot of stuff_. "And I'll tell you everything, Jack, I will. Just…just not yet."

He looked at her contemplatively, searching her eyes for the truth, which he seemed to find. "Okay. I trust you, S."

She grinned. "Okay, good." Then she laughed. "I bet you feel like an idiot for the show you just put on back there. Jamie and Harry probably think you're an asshole."

"What's new?" Jack said, waving her comment away. He took a step forward and wrapped his arms around Sophie's waist, pulling her a little closer to him, and her favorite effortless grin made an appearance on his face. "So, S, does this mean we're still boyfriend and girlfriend?" he asked playfully.

She pretended to consider his offer with seriousness and deliberation. "Well…I mean…I guess you _did _apologize in a very gentlemanly manner…."

And before she could say anything else, they were kissing again.

**I know this was a long one, friends, so thanks for sticking it out. Exciting stuff coming up! Thanks as always for reading and reviewing, wonderful people! **

**To answer a few of the most frequently asked questions I get about this story:**

**\- I do have plans for Crowley to make an appearance. He won't play a large role, but he will come up at a VERY important time in the story, so that should be fun (it always is when he's involved). Also, I don't have any current plans for Charlie to make an appearance, but that could always change depending on my whims... I have this story outlined till the end, but sometimes I get little bursts of inspiration and I include more people than I thought I would, and I love Charlie. So we'll see.**

**\- I don't have any particular actress or person that I picture in my mind's eye as Sophie. That being said, if I had to pick someone, I feel like a good representation would be a combination of Katherine McNamara and Jane Levy. But still, I never created Sophie with a person in mind to look like her... I just created her as I saw her in my head. So if neither of those two actresses satisfy how you imagine her, don't worry about it, because they're not exactly as I picture her either.**

\- **I do not have a tumblr or any other sort of page dedicated to this story off of this website. To be honest, tumblr overwhelms me.**

**\- I have VERY TINY SEEDLING ideas for a POTENTIAL sequel. That isn't a promise. Once I finish this story, we'll see how I'm feeling about it. Right now, I'm just excited to continue writing Sophie's journey with Dean and Sam as it is. So just stay tuned in terms of sequels (I also have a potential Dean/OC story in the works, so we'll see where the Supernatural winds blow).**

**And that's all folks. Until Saturday! ~ Lacey :)**


	54. Chapter 54: Arm's Length

_Chapter 54: Arm's Length_

Almost everything about the start of Sophie's junior year was absolutely perfect.

She was on student government. She made the cross country and track teams. She was loving her classes, even the photography one she thought she'd hate. She had an amazing boyfriend, and two wonderful friends. Sam and Dean had begun to go back on small hunts, leaving her with Cas, with whom she had begun the James Bond movies, starting from the very first one. She didn't even have the same problem that she'd had the year before, with her personal bully Mason, because his father had decided that boarding school was a better fit for him.

It was the kind of perfect school experience that Sophie couldn't have pictured a year before if she had tried.

The only problem, the only smudge of imperfection on an otherwise stainless year, was Remy.

Sophie watched in astonishment as Remy became a part of Lebanon Central's student elite. He ate lunch with the coolest kids in school and ate up all the attention he got from them. They were all completely awestruck by his brooding nature and bad boy attitude and sleek motorcycle. The hottest girls at school practically threw themselves at him, and all of the hottest guys wanted to be him. He ate lunch with them and conversed with them in the halls.

Lebanon Central wasn't quite like the stereotypical school in the sense that the so-called popular crowd was generally bitchy and unapproachable. In fact, Sophie was friends with a few people in that group and could strike up a conversation with pretty much anyone. She sort of transcended the whole clique issue with her genuine personality and sweet disposition.

But it was still strange to see her guardian angel hanging out with the "cool" kids.

As for her and Remy's..._unique _relationship, they got along. He seemed to always be around where she was, which wasn't too crazy, especially since Lebanon Central wasn't a particularly large school. But still, his omnipresence still got to her sometimes. They would sometimes have small exchanges in classes, ones that Sophie tried not to get too immersed in. And she could tell that even though he hung out with the popular crowd, he was still always focused on her. Anytime they were in the same room and she glanced in his direction, his eyes would meet hers. Anytime she thought about him, she felt the distinct sensation of knowing that he was thinking about her too. She knew it was just on account of the fact that their souls were tethered to each other, and not because she held any of his genuine interest, but it was still so bizarre to her.

And if she was being honest with herself, she was scared of growing close to Remy. She knew that if she let it happen, there was a potential for them to become friends. But he already knew so much about her, and not the kind of stuff that could be written down on paper. Sure, he knew about her past and her mom and Steve and her time with Sam and Dean, but he also knew the parts of her that couldn't be put into words, her character and her essence and the things that made up her soul. And it was scary to have someone know that much about you. She wasn't sure she wanted to make that connection any more tangible than it already was.

So she held him at arm's length at school. It was just easier that way. Besides, she didn't really want Jack to know that she was deeply connected to the one guy at school he seemed to hate. Remy didn't really help that whole issue. Any time her guardian angel was around Jack, he found a way to make a snarky remark that rubbed him the wrong way.

Sophie had eventually filled Jack in on almost everything that had gone down over the summer on her hunting trip. She told him about the vampires and about the bar with the drunk man she'd made an idiot out of, and about all the other adventures she'd had with her dad and uncle. She even told him about Taylor, which was a little hard for him to hear, seeing as he'd been possessed by her. As Sophie told him the whole story about running into her at the gas station and bringing her back to the bunker, he'd been twisting the anti-possession bracelet Sophie had given him, clearly not happy that the demon was still at the bunker with them.

But even after all of that, she never told him about Remy. She just didn't want to open that particular Pandora's box. And the longer she waited, the worse she knew his reaction would be once he finally found out.

But at this point, what was one more person that she held at arm's length?

What was one more little secret?

* * *

It was early November when Sam and Dean hit their first real lead in saving Dean's soul from Beelzebub's plot for world domination.

They'd been working a pretty shady case involving witches in Arizona, and Dean was starting to feel the pressure getting to him. He still had about six months until Beelzebub would be coming to collect his soul, but it was beginning to freak him out how his original time had already been cut in half. He, Sam, and even Cas had been using every spare moment trying to figure this whole thing out, but so far they'd had absolutely no luck.

So it was a shock when smack in the middle of their witch case, Sam's phone rang.

They were sitting in the Impala, staking out one of the women they were pretty sure was involved in all of the witchy activity. Dean was chomping down on a burger as Sam drank deeply from a cup of coffee. They were going on hour five, and they were both grumpy and annoyed. They weren't even sure this woman was their witch, they were just going off of a hunch.

Dean was just about to suggest that maybe their hunch was wrong when Sam's cell went off.

The older Winchester glanced over at Sam's lap. "Is it Soph?" he asked.

Sam looked down at his phone, a confused look on his face. "No. I've never seen this number before." He stared at it for one more moment curiously, and then he picked it up and answered it. "Hello?"

"Um, hi. Is this Agent Vedder?"

Sam looked over at Dean, who was focused on unbending the straw of his soda, and then concentrated back on the call. "Yes, this is he."

"This is Dr. Eugene Thompson. You visited me over the summer wanting information on the demonology behind Beelzebub for one of your cases, correct?"

Sam straightened in interest. "Yes, I did. Did you find something new?"

"I think I might have," Dr. Thompson replied. "There was this archaeological excavation done in August in Israel and they dug up some pretty neat stuff. One thing I was able to translate on one of the tablets that they recovered talks about a Ritual of the Stars, which sounds like something I think you might be interested in."

"Yeah, it definitely does," Sam said quickly. "Listen, my partner and I, we're caught up in a case in Arizona right now. But I can head over there in a day or so to collect whatever it is that you have."

"Alright then," Dr. Thompson said. "I suppose I'll see you in day or so then. I'll see you around, agent."

He hung up, and Sam lowered the phone and looked at Dean. "What was that about?" Dean asked, finishing the last bite of his burger.

"That was Dr. Thompson," Sam said slowly.

"Who's that, your gynecologist?" Dean asked, sucking the grease off of his fingers.

Sam shot him a look. "Cute, Dean. He's that occult scholar in Nebraska, the one we were going to talk to about Beelzebub when the whole thing with Sophie and the Bash happened."

At that, Dean looked over at his brother sharply. "Wait, really? What'd he say?"

"Just that he might have some new info on Beelzebub that he didn't have before," Sam said. "Either way, it's worth the drive over there."

"Yeah," Dean said, nodding slowly. "Want me to go with you?"

"Nah," Sam replied. "After we take down these witches, I'll go see if what Dr. Thompson has is worth anything, and you go back home to Sophie."

"You sure?" Dean asked, uncertain.

"Yeah Dean, we've been gone for two weeks. She's probably about to murder Cas."

Dean grinned. "You're probably right. Okay then. Sounds like a plan."

There was movement inside of the house they were watching, and suddenly the woman they were suspicious of appeared in her window, a large spellbook in her hand, and they could see her chanting dramatically.

Dean reached for his gun, which he made sure was locked and loaded, and looked over at Sam. "But first, let's stop this witch bitch and get out of here."

* * *

Sophie woke up the morning Dean told her that he was supposed to get home and was immediately struck with one simple desire—to talk to Taylor.

She wasn't sure what brought it on. Maybe it was the fact that the night before, when she and Cas had been watching _Goldfinger_, it suddenly occurred to her that while she was out in the bunker having a fun movie night with her angel friend, the demon that had tried to kill her twice was still locked somewhere not a hundred feet away from her. And it had bothered her throughout the rest of the night. She hadn't been able to focus on the movie or on Cas' funny and clueless commentary.

All she could think about was Taylor.

Maybe it had something to do with her growing feeling that whatever it was that Sam and Dean were hiding from her, it was massive. She could feel the growing tension around them even when she wasn't around, and she could especially feel it whenever she walked into a room and Sam and Dean would suddenly stop their conversation, or immediately change it to something she knew they hadn't been talking about before.

She was tired of the secrecy.

And while Taylor was many things, none of which were all that good, she wasn't secretive.

And so, after Sophie performed her daily routine of running, showering, getting dressed, and making herself some coffee, she armed herself with an angel blade and made her way down into the dungeon-like room in which Taylor was kept.

When the door creaked open and she made her way in, the first thing she heard was a laugh. "I knew you'd come down here eventually," a dry female voice echoed in the dark. "It was only a matter of time."

Sophie flicked the lights on, holding onto the angel blade as tight as she could, trying to push back her fear of this demon as she laid eyes on her. Taylor looked a lot different than the last time she'd seen her. Her clothes were ripped, and dried blood coated her entire body. Her hair could barely be distinguished as blonde anymore, but her sharp blue eyes seemed to glow from behind her bloodstained face. Sophie had seen her dad and uncle slip into the room occasionally when they thought she wasn't paying attention, trying to get more information out of the demon, but they never gave her an update. Probably because they didn't want to admit that their "interrogation" wasn't exactly all that effective.

But Sophie didn't want the information that Taylor couldn't give her. She just wanted anything at all.

"What is it, baby Winchester? You mustered up all this bravado to show up down here and now you don't know what to say?"

Sophie glared at the blonde bitch in front of her. "I have some questions for you."

Taylor rolled her eyes. "All of you Winchesters have so many questions for me. No one ever just comes down to chat. Do you know how boring it is in here, all day long, no interaction whatsoever?"

"I don't care about you at all," Sophie deadpanned. "I don't care if you're bored, or in pain, or dead. The only reason you're still alive is because my dad and Sam seem to think you might be useful to them."

"That's because that's true," Taylor said, eyes glittering.

"But how?" Sophie asked, taking a step closer to the demon. "How are you helpful? Every time they walk in here, they leave with no more answers than they had when they walked in, and yet somehow, you're still here. Why is that?"

At that, Taylor looked intrigued. "You mean you don't know?"

"Don't know what?" Sophie asked, eyes narrowed.

At that, Taylor threw back her head and laughed. "Well, hot damn, would you look at that? You actually don't know. They managed to keep you in the dark about it for this long? How is that even possible? Are you some sort of idiot? Did mama drop you on your head as a baby?"

Sophie stepped forward, pointing the angel blade at Taylor in anger. "What don't I know?" she asked again, this time through gritted teeth.

Taylor grinned, and Sophie found that the expression sent a shiver down her spine. "What do you know about a demon named Beelzebub?"

Sophie froze, confused. She racked her brain for why that name might sound familiar. "Isn't that another name for the Devil?"

"Depending on your theology," Taylor said. "But this Beelzebub, he's his own person, a powerful demon of Hell's First Hierarchy. The only creature in Hell more powerful than him is Lucifer. And Beelzebub is in the middle of a power struggle of sorts in which he needs Lucifer dead. And for that, he needs your father."

At that, Sophie flinched back from her. "My dad? Why the hell would this Beelzebub need my dad for that?"

"I'll tell you, but only if you do something for me," Taylor said slickly, a grin on her face.

Sophie crossed her arms, glaring at the demon in front of her. "You're a freaking idiot if you think I'd let you out of here just for a piece of information like that."

"I'm not asking for you to bust me out," Taylor said with another roll of her eyes. "I just want some entertainment. Maybe a book or something. Anything to make me not want to blow my brains out."

"I'd actually be totally okay with you blowing your brains out," Sophie snapped.

"But then I couldn't give you the information you want," Taylor replied with a grin.

With an exasperated groan and knowing full well that Taylor was just toying with her for pure entertainment, Sophie stomped out of the dungeon and returned five minutes later with two books in her hands. Silently, she tossed them into the demon's lap.

When Taylor saw the covers of the two books, she laughed. "You're clever, Winchester, I'll give you that. _Angels &amp; Demons_ and the Bible."

"You could probably use some Jesus," Sophie snapped. "I don't know him all that well, but I hear he's a pretty stand-up guy."

"You know, I like you," Taylor mused. "I'm almost regretting trying to kill you."

"I'm touched, truly. But I want my information now," Sophie cut in, not in the mood for Taylor's word games. "No more talking in circles."

"Alright, alright," Taylor conceded.

"Why does Beelzebub need my dad to kill Lucifer?" Sophie asked again, shifting the angel blade from one hand to the other. "And why is Beelzebub interested in killing Lucifer in the first place?"

Taylor leaned back in her chair, eyes focused on Sophie. "Lucifer and Beelzebub are both in the First Hierarchy, but since Lucifer is the highest ranking member, he holds all of the actual power. If Beelzebub were to kill him, then _he _would have all of those powers. He has a ritual to open Lucifer's cage which requires a soul, a very particular soul. And Papa Winchester meets all the qualifications. Actually, so does Uncle Winchester, but I'm pretty damn sure Beelzebub's pretty committed to using your dad now."

Sophie just stood there, shocked. Some demon was after her dad's soul. That's what this whole thing had been about? "Well, there's no way that'll ever happen," she finally said. "No spawn of Satan is getting a hold of my dad's soul. There's just no way he'd go down that road again. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt."

"I'd agree with you," Taylor said smoothly, "if not for the fact that good old Dean already signed his soul over to Beelzebub. Made an agreement to hand it over to him on a silver platter whenever he comes to collect."

Sophie took a step back, the hand holding the angel blade falling to her side. "No," she said calmly, surely. It didn't cross her mind for a moment that Taylor could be telling the truth. "You're lying. He would never do that."

"But he did," Taylor assured her. "That case in Raleigh that they never finished? The one they cut off early? That's when it happened."

Sophie's mind was racing a million miles a minute. When they had come back from that case, she had been able to tell that something was off. Their demeanors had been dark and defeated, and she had just hoped that it was because they were tired after a long, hard, fruitless hunt. She never would have guessed that Dean would have just signed over his soul to a powerful demon.

"No," she said, shaking her head. "That's not…it's not possible."

"Sorry, sweet cheeks," Taylor sung happily. "But your daddy doesn't have more than six months to live."

Sophie was still in a daze when he heard a clamoring from behind her. "Sophie, I'm back!"

It was Dean, calling out to her from the door of the bunker. His voice froze her where she stood. "Sophie?" she heard him call out again. She immediately tucked the blade back into her jeans, knowing if he caught her in there with Taylor she was a goner. "Soph, where are—" She turned to leave just as Dean barreled into the room, watching as his eyes widened at the sight of her standing in front of Taylor.

"Sophie!" he yelled, grabbed her elbow and yanking her behind him. "Get the hell away from her!"

Still in a state of shock, Sophie let him pull her to the side. He turned his head towards Taylor. "I'll deal with you later, you ugly bitch."

Taylor just laughed. "See you later, darling!"

Dean turned back towards Sophie, roughly grabbing her and pushing her out of the room, slamming the door shut and locking it behind him. She remained silent as he pushed her towards the main room, and once they stepped into it he let go of her. "What the hell were you thinking?" he yelled at her. She wasn't sure she had ever seen him more furious in her life.

When she didn't answer, he kept yelling. "I gave you one rule when Sam and I left. One damn rule. _Don't mess with the demon_. It's a very good rule, one that keeps you alive! You don't go in there by yourself and talk to her! How could you do something so stupid? What if I hadn't been here?"

At that, Sophie felt herself begin to slowly thaw out, and her anger and grief began to unfreeze her. "She was chained and locked inside of a devil's trap, Dad, she wasn't going anywhere."

"I don't care!" he yelled. "Monsters escape traps sometimes, Soph! And then people get killed!"

She rolled her eyes at him. "I wasn't going to get killed. You're overreacting."

"Don't you _dare _roll your eyes at me over this, Sophie!" he practically roared at her, causing her to jump. "You're a smart kid, you really are, but what you just did was the stupidest thing you've ever freaking done! Sam and I were both gone, you had no idea who or what that bitch is or is capable of, and I could've walked in on her standing over your dead body!"

"Are you sure you're angry because it wasn't safe, or because of what she might've told me?" Sophie challenged.

Dean launched himself forward, prepared to yell more at her, but then when her words registered, he froze. "What?"

"Yeah!" she snapped, feeling anger rushing through her body, pure and white hot. "I had a great chat with the demon that's tried to kill me twice. And you know what? Turns out she's been more honest with me in the last ten minutes than my damn _father _has been to me for the last six months!"

The look of surprise and dread on Dean's face did nothing to lessen her fury. "What did she tell you?" he asked unevenly.

Sophie couldn't help the tears that sprang to her eyes. "Please, Dad," she started in a more vulnerable tone, her voice conveying her despair. "Please tell me you didn't sign your soul over to a really, really scary demon named Beelzebub. Please tell me you have more than six months to live."

The heartbroken look on Dean's face said it all. His eyes grew dark, and his jaw grew taut, like he was gritting his teeth. He stared at her with hard, pained eyes, and Sophie choked on a sob she was trying to hold down. Dean stepped forward, every ounce of his anger gone, replaced with shame. He gently placed a hand on her shoulder. "Soph—"

"No!" she yelled, pushing his hand off of her and stepping back. "You've been lying to me for months! You _and _Sam."

"Sophie, please, listen to me," he started, his green eyes begging, his expression one of utter heartbreak.

"No!" she exclaimed again. "How could you? How could you do that? Give your soul over to some demon? Haven't you learned anything about how that never works in the long run? How could you sign up to leave me?"

"That's not what I wanted, Soph, you've got to know that," Dean tried, taking another step closer to her. "He was threatening someone that I cared about, and I just broke. I told him he could have my soul. It was a choice I didn't want to make, but—"

"You should have at least told me!" Sophie yelled at him. Tears were running down her face now, and she wasn't even making an effort to wipe them away. "You let me just go on for six months, thinking that this whole routine…this whole life…could be something I could get used to! You let me believe that this family was working!" She screamed the last word just as her voice cracked, and she felt her own body quaking with the cries of pain and anger that she was trying to shove down.

Dean took another step forward, placing both hands on her shoulders. She had never seen this look in his eyes, this look of fear, like he was holding on to a rapidly deflating life raft. "Sophie, sweetheart, it _is _working. It's working so well. That's why Sam and I have been trying to find a way to fix this whole situation. We didn't want to worry you."

"Oh, bull!" Sophie yelled, pulling herself away from Dean again. She tried to pretend she didn't see him flinch from her anger. "A parent hides the fact that they're a month behind on paying the rent so that their kid doesn't worry, not the fact that they signed away their soul to unleash freaking _Lucifer_. You should have told me!"

Dean stepped back, the look of pain on his face clear as day. "I know. And I'm sorry, Sophie, I am. But I can't change it. So what do you want from me?"

Sophie stared at the man in front of her. What did she want from him?

She wanted him not to leave her. She wanted him to be there when she graduated, when she moved away from the bunker, when she got married and had kids. She wanted him to pick up the phone when she called him after a stressful day at work, so she could talk to him about her life and his life and realize that even on the worst days, at least she had this one man who cared enough about her not to leave her.

She wanted him to be the _one_ person she didn't need to hold away from her at arm's length.

And she could understand Dean dying. Hunters died. That was a basic fact, like two plus two equals four or that Christmas Day is on the twenty-fifth of December. She had come to the dark but necessary understanding that while Dean was the best at his job, there was always a chance he might walk out of the door and never return.

But this. This wasn't what Sophie had signed up for. This was Dean, throwing himself away, intentionally giving up his soul.

Intentionally giving up her.

This wasn't the person she'd grown to love so much. Because that man didn't keep secrets from her, not ones that affected her so much like this. He didn't lie to her and keep her in the dark. He didn't give up on her.

This wasn't him.

"What do you want from me, Soph?" Dean asked again, this time yelling, his voice imploring her for some sort of answer.

She didn't even know who her father was anymore. The thought made her burst into sobs, and she said the first thing that came to her mind, what she felt deep in her heart and in her bones.

"I want my mom!" she cried, and then she fled the room.

She heard the sound of a chair being thrown angrily to the floor in the room behind her as she rushed into her room, slamming the door behind her. She stood there, sobbing with her back against the door, for about thirty seconds. She practically choked on her cries as they burned their way out of her throat, and she didn't even know she was capable of producing so many tears. She cried for what felt like a century, but was actually less than a minute. And then, in a sudden moment of clarity, she took a few deep breaths to calm herself and then made her way over to her school backpack.

Shakily, tears still falling down her face, she dumped the contents of her bag into a mess on the floor, and then proceeded to shove clothes from her closet, a pair of shoes, and some toiletries from her bathroom into it. Then she grabbed her phone, her keys, and her wallet, and then she burst back out of her room and made a beeline for the garage.

As she passed by the main room, where Dean was picking up the pieces of a chair she guessed he'd broken, he looked up. "Where are you going?" he asked in a broken voice.

She didn't answer, determinedly avoiding looking at him and continuing towards the garage.

"Sophie, where are you going?" he asked again, this time more sharply.

Her pace quickened, and she heard him call out to her again before she slammed the door to the garage and jumped into her car, racing out of there before she could change her mind.

**Trouble in paradise. Tune in Wednesday to see what happens next (and if not Wednesday, then Saturday. My poor laptop is old and feeble and dying on me, and there's a chance he dies on me this week, so if that happens it'll be Saturday). Thanks for reading! ~ Lacey :)**


	55. Chapter 55: This Is Not Our Fate

_Chapter 55: This Is Not Our Fate_

Sophie had no destination in mind until three hours into her drive. And once she decided where to go, she wondered if maybe she had subconsciously been driving there the whole time anyway.

Asheville, North Carolina.

The city she grew up in. The city where she learned to ride a bike, where she had her first piano lesson, where she got her first broken bone, where she'd gotten her puppy Olly back when she was four years old.

The city where her mother was buried.

She still had about thirteen hours left to go in the trip, but her tank was full of gas and her body was full of enough anger to get her all the way there.

She turned on her radio to the only station that it could receive on the highway in the middle of nowhere that she was traveling down, which was, to her annoyance, a classic rock station. "Of course," she muttered angrily, but she didn't turn it off. She gripped the steering wheel tightly, destination in mind, as "All Along the Watchtower" by Jimi Hendrix blasted out of her stereo. "_There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke, but you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate_."

She hadn't realized that she was singing along at first. She didn't even know how she knew the words, but apparently she'd been in the car with Dean one too many times, because she was jamming along to it in a fury, like her life depended on her singing the song.

The song tapered off to a finish, and she was breathing hard from her jam session, when she heard someone say, "Well, I guess you can cross professional singer off of your list of potential careers."

She jerked her head to the side to see Remy sitting in the passenger seat next to her, and she screamed at his sudden appearance, swerving in the other lane. Remy lurched over and grabbed the steering wheel, pulling the car back over into its proper lane. "You're very lucky this road is practically deserted," he informed her.

"Remy!" she screamed. "What the hell are you doing?"

"I'm pretty sure I just saved your life," he noted, motioning to the car that was passing by them at that moment.

"Yeah, right before almost killing me!" she snapped.

"Well, you probably would've done that for me if you'd kept driving as angrily as you were. Driving pissed off is almost as bad as driving drunk," he noted, staring at her with those green-grey eyes of his.

"You know what, Remy?" Sophie said, glaring at the road ahead. "Why don't you just go away?"

"I would," he said, adjusting his seat so that it leaned backwards, "except I'm sort of your guardian angel, and you're sort of putting yourself in a stupid situation because you're emotional, and it's sort of part of my job description to do everything in my heavenly power to make sure you don't kill yourself."

"Just leave me alone," she said, staring carefully at the license plate of the car thirty feet ahead of her. "I'm really not in the mood."

"Look, I take it you found out about Beelzebub."

At that, she turned to glare at him. "You knew?"

He nodded, leaning back in his seat, tucking his hands behind his head. "I did. And before you yell at me, I did advise your father to tell you about the whole thing. But he's blinded by his desire to create a world of normalcy for you."

She turned back to focus on the road. "That's a really weak excuse."

"Maybe," Remy admitted. "But either way, he never wanted to hurt you."

"Well, he did," Sophie snapped. "And if you're going to spend the next thirteen hours lecturing me about how I should let my dad off the hook for not telling me he sold is freaking soul to Hell's biggest douchebag, then I'd really prefer if you just poof away from here."

"Thirteen hours?" Remy asked, straightening up. "Where are we going?"

"_I _am going to Asheville, North Carolina," she said without explanation. Remy didn't seem to need one.

"Don't you have school tomorrow?" he tried instead.

"Don't _you_?" she shot back.

He chuckled. "Okay, fine. I guess we're roadtripping then."

Sophie shook her head. "No way, buster. There is no _we _in this. Leave me the hell alone."

"No can do," he told her. "The boss man up in the sky would not be happy with me about that."

"God," Sophie deadpanned. "You're going to use _God _as your excuse for being a clingy jerk?"

Remy grinned, and out of the corner of her eye she realized that he had a slight dimple on his left cheek when he smiled. How had she not noticed that before? "Actually, I report to an angel named Jophiel, and she really brings down the hammer, let me tell you."

Sophie groaned. "I need alone time, Remy, can't you understand that?"

"Why else do you think I afforded you the last three hours?" he asked her calmly. "I felt your rage the moment you left the bunker, and I could tell you needed some time to cool off. But now, you're getting a roadtrip buddy, so you better get used to it."

She narrowed her eyes. "Fine," she replied shortly, seeing there was no way she was going to win this fight, and then she turned the volume up to its loudest caliber, some ZZ Top song that she hated blaring out of her speakers.

Remy just shrugged, and then he tossed his feet onto her dashboard.

"No!" Sophie yelled over her music, shooting him a death glare. "Get your big ugly feet off of my car!"

"Then stop driving eighty-five miles per hour in a seventy zone," Remy yelled back at her, eyes glinting with amusement.

Grudgingly, Sophie stepped on her breaks until she reached a safer speed. "Happy?"

Remy took his feet off the dashboard and shot her a dazzling smile. "I'll be happy when you stop making stupid decisions that make my job very, very difficult, Sophie."

"Then you better get good and comfortable with being unhappy."

He just laughed, leaned back, and let Sophie drive ahead.

* * *

Dean was sitting in the bunker, a glass of whiskey practically glued to his lips, a newspaper in his hand. He'd read the title of the headline about eight times, but he still wasn't sure what it said. He just couldn't bring himself to care any about the many problems going on in the world when he had just watched his daughter's heart break in two right in front of his eyes.

It had been nearly twelve hours since she had stormed out of the bunker, and she still wasn't back yet. He was worried, he was upset, and more than anything, he was sad.

Because he knew the fragile but happy little family that he had somehow managed to build up over the course of the past year had just irrevocably changed. There was no way they could come back from this, or at least not the same as they had been before. And that was a bitter pill to swallow.

It didn't register in his mind that someone was calling him until the fourth ring of his cell phone. When he saw it glowing, though, and vaguely acknowledged that it was Sam calling, he grabbed it and flipped it open. "Yeah," he said despondently.

"This stuff Dr. Thompson has could really, really help us out, Dean, like this is some big—wait, woah, are you okay? You sound awful."

Dean was quiet for a moment, taking another long drink of whiskey. "Sophie's gone," he said monotonously.

There was static on the other end. "Gone?" Sam finally repeated. "What do you mean, gone?"

"When I got back I found her talking with Taylor," Dean said, staring down at his alcohol. "Demon bitch told her everything about Beelzebub. She got pissed at me and she started crying and…she just left."

There was another long stretch of silence. "How long has she been gone?"

"I don't know, man," Dean said, shaking his head. "Maybe since eleven this morning."

"Eleven?" Sam yelled, and Dean was taken aback by the force in his brother's voice. "Dean, it's almost midnight!"

"I know."

"You…. Dammit, Dean, how much have you been drinking?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know," Sam repeated, the frustration audible in his tone. "That's Dean Winchester for too damn much."

Dean was silent for a moment, finishing off his glass of whiskey and feeling like the lowest of the low. Then he cleared his throat. "I don't know what to do, Sammy," he finally said, his voice low and choked.

There was shuffling on the other end of the phone. "Have you tried calling her?"

"Yeah. She's not answering. And she disabled the GPS on her phone."

"What about Cas?" Sam tried. "Maybe he could get into contact with Eremiel, try to figure out where she is."

"I tried him, too," Dean said. "He must be busy."

"Well…the fact that we haven't heard from Eremiel is probably good," Sam tried to reason. "That means he's with her and watching out for her. If something was wrong, he'd have come here and told us. It's one of those no news is good news situations."

"Either way, she hates me now, Sam. She probably hates you too. And honestly, I don't blame her."

Sam's voice changed to scolding. "Get over yourself, Dean. She doesn't hate us, she's just pissed. And the only reason she's pissed is because she loves you and she's scared. She just needs to burn off some steam."

"She's been gone twelve hours, Sam," Dean said dejectedly. "That's a lot of steam to burn off."

Dean could hear Sam step on the accelerator. "Look, I'm about an hour from the bunker. When I get back we'll figure out how to find her and see if she's okay, which I'm sure she is. Just…try to sober up a bit, okay?"

"Sure thing, Sammy," Dean said listlessly.

He hung up, tossed the phone on the table, and poured himself another glass of whiskey.

* * *

Sophie and Remy pulled up to a motel in Asheville around three in the morning.

Sophie had to admit, roadtripping with Remy hadn't been the worst thing in the world. He'd been disarmingly easy to talk to, once she had gotten into the talking mood, and he'd surprised her with a lot of the information he'd given about himself.

He told her about his preference for country music, which had just made her laugh almost uncontrollably, because Remy seemed like the last creature on Heaven, Hell, or earth to enjoy the genre of country music. He told her that the kids he hung out with at school were nice, but they were just that—kids. But he wanted to give her space at school, and he understood that that was something that she needed, so he didn't mind.

He also told her about the angel that he was closest to in Heaven, a simple angel with the heavenly equivalent of a desk job, named Ariel. He described their relationship as that between an older brother and a younger sister, and he said he cared very deeply for her. She was his only family, and he talked about her for nearly an hour, and Sophie got the first hint that there were many more layers to the angel Eremiel than she had once thought.

It was interesting for Sophie to see this side of Remy. All she had seen before was the brooding, intense side of him when he acted all guardian angel-y, and then the blasé, borderline egotistical side of him that came out whenever he put on his whole smooth, charming façade that Sophie wasn't entirely convinced was all fake. But this side of him, the genuine side, the side that was almost—dare she say it—human, made her that much more confident in the person who was Heaven-ordained to protect her life.

The motel that she'd chosen was no five-star resort, but it was still a little better than the dives that Sam and Dean usually holed up in. She couldn't care less about forking up some of the emergency money Dean had given her to stowe in her car; after all, it's not like she was going to stay there a very long time, and besides, she needed a place to sleep.

After she'd parked her car, she and Remy walked up to the front desk, where a scrawny young man with greasy dark hair and a full upper body tattoo peeking out from the collar of his T-shirt stood manning the computer. He glanced up at the two of them as they walked in. "Can I help you?" he asked in a surprisingly deep voice.

Sophie pulled out a wad of cash from her backpack. "I need a room with two beds, please."

"Can I see some ID?" the man asked.

"Excuse me?" Sophie replied, confused.

"Well, you need to be twenty-one to rent a room here," he explained. "Kind of standard. So can I see some ID?"

"Twenty-one? What kind of dumb bullsh—"

"Here," Remy interrupted, a small grin on his face, grabbing his wallet out of his front jacket pocket and sliding his fake ID across the counter. Sophie glanced at it. Remy Wallace, age twenty-two, from Seattle, Washington. "Will that do it for you?"

The man grabbed the ID, glanced at it for all of one second, and then slid it back to Remy. "Looks good to me," he said, pocketing the cash Sophie had coughed up and sliding them a key. "You're in room 114."

"Thanks," Remy said, putting a hand on Sophie's back and gently leading her away from the desk. She was still annoyed, and once they were out of earshot she started complaining.

"Twenty-one," she snapped. "That's ridiculous. It's a room with a bed, not a bottle of liquor."

Remy grinned down at her, and her heart jumped straight up into her throat as his forest eyes met hers. "Maybe you should stop sweating the small stuff, Ace. You're going to give yourself a heart attack."

She whipped her head around to glare at him. "Ace? Really? A cheesy, overused term of endearment? Be a little original."

"What can I say?" he said. "You're endearing."

"Quit being so charming, I like you better as an annoying ass," Sophie grumbled as they got to their room. She stuck the key in the door and turned the lock.

"That could be arranged," Remy replied as she opened the door.

He squeezed in before her and claimed the bed closest to the window. "Hey!" she exclaimed. "That one's mine! I always take the window bed!"

"I'm reverting back to my annoying ass self, remember?" Remy teased, leaning back on the bed.

"This is so dumb," Sophie snapped, throwing her bag onto the other bed. "You don't even sleep."

"I can if I want to," he said. "I kind of like sleep. Dreams are pretty cool."

Reluctantly, Sophie felt the corner of her lip get pulled upward into a tiny smile by an invisible force. "Yeah, dreams _are _pretty cool, I guess." She unzipped her bag and then looked up at Remy. "Seriously, I'm paying for this crappy room, so why shouldn't I get the bed near the window?"

"Because I'm the first line of defense in case something decides to come at us through the window," he declared, and she could've sworn she saw him intentionally puff out his chest.

She gave him a look. "Well, what if they come through the door?" Remy was briefly stumped. "See, exactly. You just want the bed with the view."

"You got me," Remy admitted, walking over to the window and peeking out of the curtains. "Although our view is just a sketchy empty parking lot, so really, I'm not winning much."

Sophie sighed, shrugging out of her jacket and grabbing a pair of athletic shorts to sleep in as well as a toothbrush. She made her way to the bathroom, quickly changed and brushed her teeth, and then made her way back into the room. Remy was already lounging on his bed, flipping through the Book of Mormon that he'd found in the bedside table. She didn't even ask him about it. She just tucked her backpack under the bed, plugged her phone in to charge, and said, "We're getting up early."

Before he could reply, she turned off the lights and crawled into bed. If he ever did say anything back to her, she never heard it, because she was out like a light just seconds after her head hit the pillow.

* * *

When Sam arrived back at the bunker that night, he was sure that he'd find Dean on the phone or searching something on his laptop, trying to figure out where on earth Sophie could've gone off to.

Instead, when he walked into the main room, he saw Dean slumped in his chair in defeat, a glass of whiskey in his hand as he stared off into the stacks of books surrounding him in a daze.

Sam approached him slowly. "Dean?"

Dean turned at the sound of his voice. "Hey, Sammy," he said, sounding exhausted.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"I'm…," Dean started, not really sure what to say. "I'm thinking."

Sam tossed his backpack onto the table. "Thinking about what?"

Something seemed to flicker in his expression, and Sam saw something on his brother's face that he hadn't seen in a while. "Hell," Dean responded.

That was not what Sam had been expecting. He sat down and grabbed the bottle of whiskey that Dean had nearly drained, taking a drink straight from the bottle. He thought about yelling at his brother, telling him that going down that road was a colossal waste of time, but he decided against it. "Why?" he asked instead.

"Hell was…well, hell, Sam," Dean started. "But you know that."

Sam nodded, running his finger absentmindedly over the scar on his hand that still managed to calm him down every time he thought about his time spent with Lucifer and Michael in the Cage. "I do," Sam allowed. "What about it?"

"I used to think that me going to Hell was the worst thing that could ever happen to me," he started. "And maybe it is. But today I think I've come to a new understanding of it."

"And what's that?" Sam asked, taking another drink of whiskey.

"It hurts more to know that she's in pain knowing that I'm going to Hell, and that her knowing is going to make all of the time I have left with her so much different," he replied gruffly. "And, I mean, I know we don't actually know what good old Bubby meant by saying he needed my soul for a ritual. Maybe I won't even go to Hell. Maybe he'll just rip my soul from my body and then obliterate it, make it so that I just…cease to exist."

"Dean—"

"No, Sam, don't," Dean cut in harshly. "We need to face realities here. I'm not saying I'm giving up on my soul. I'm not doing that. But it scares the hell out of me, what might happen to Soph if I'm gone and she's left alone in the world, and it kills me that there's a chance that I could die knowing that she's pissed at me."

At that, Sam found himself getting angry. "Dean, you're so stupid sometimes it amazes me."

His brother glanced at him in surprise. "I'm spilling all my guts out to you and you're calling me stupid? That's the last time I try to talk about my—"

"Dean," Sam snapped loudly. "Do you really think, that if we somehow failed and you were gone, that I would just let Sophie go off on her own? Do you really think I wouldn't take care of her and do everything that I can to make sure she's okay?"

Dean looked taken aback. Clearly, he hadn't thought about that.

"You know that I love her," Sam continued. "She's my family, and if you think for one second that I would just toss her to the side if you were gone, then you're an idiot, and you don't know me at all." Sam took another drink from the whiskey bottle, slamming it back down onto the table when he was done. "And you know, Sophie's pissed because she loves you. That's a big difference from her just being angry, and you know it. So man up, get over it, and start figuring out how to fix all of this before you go down a road you can't come back from!"

He finished off the whiskey and then dropped the bottle away from Dean, staring at his brother with hard eyes. Finally, Dean just nodded.

"You're right," he finally admitted. "I just…I don't know, I think I've been wallowing for too long. And maybe drinking too long, too."

"You got that right," Sam said, but his voice was a little less sharp. "So, neither Sophie nor Cas are answering my calls either, so for now we need to just assume that Eremiel is with her and that she is safe with him."

"I'm not comfortable making that assumption," Dean grumbled.

"Me neither," Sam admitted, "but for now, we need to. And for future reference, we also need to put a tracker in her car."

"Damn right we do," Dean replied.

Sam opened his backpack and pulled out his laptop and a file full of papers. "Right now," he said, opening up his laptop, "we need to worry about all of this info that Dr. Thompson gave us on Beelzebub and the First Hierarchy."

Dean snatched the file from him, flipping it open. "Anything new?"

"Oh yeah," Sam said, pulling up a file on his computer. "I think we might have the ritual that Beelzebub's planning on using to bust open Lucifer's Cage."

Dean's eyes widened. He had been expecting a few pieces of lore on the bastard, not the very chunk of information that could help them actually win this fight with him. "Wait, really?"

Sam nodded, clicking on one of the documents Dr. Thompson had let him download and turning the laptop to face Dean. "It's called the Ritual of the Stars. Dr. Thompson got a hold of a translated copy of the original," he said, eyes bright with excitement. "And if it's done properly, it's supposed to channel all the energy of the stars into setting free the purest evil in the universe."

"Awesome. Well, I guess our pal the Devil would qualify as the purest evil in the universe. Bet that gets Bubby's panties in a jealous wad," Dean muttered under his breath, studying the text describing the ritual. "Jesus, this looks absolutely disgusting."

"Yeah," Sam agreed, cringing a little. "The wings of Heaven's most cherished, the blood of fifty innocents, the bone of an unborn king, and a willing soul that has been tested by Hell, touched by Heaven, and has defeated Lucifer once before. And the ritual needs to be done during a significant celestial event."

"The blood of fifty innocents," Dean repeated, his voice filled with revulsion. "I hate this son of a bitch."

"You're preaching to the choir," Sam said. "That ingredient seems easy enough to decipher. Same with the soul, because obviously that's you. But the other two? Who the hell is Heaven's most cherished?"

"If Cas ever answers his damn phone or any of the three hundred prayers I've sent to him, maybe we can find out," Dean griped. "What about the whole bone of an unborn king thing? That seems pretty impossible, too."

"Yeah, well, Beelzebub didn't seem to think any of this was impossible," Sam replied darkly. "So we shouldn't either."

Dean looked closely at the ritual again. "There's nothing here about how to stop this ritual from happening," he pointed out.

"That's where this comes in," Sam said, grabbing the laptop back from Dean, pulling up another file, and then handing it back to him.

Dean studied the screen, and then shot Sam a look. "Sam, if I couldn't pass eighth grade Spanish, there's no way in hell I'm going to be able to decipher this foreign language that looks like it was scratched onto these pieces of rock with a butter knife." He gestured to the pictures Sam had pulled up onto the screen of giant slabs of stone with crude markings on it, resembling Egyptian hieroglyphs.

"I don't know what it means, either," Sam admitted. "But we're going to find a way to translate it."

"Why?" Dean asked, studying the pictures more closely. "What is it?"

There was a light in Sam's hazel eyes, and Dean was painfully aware of what that light was. The tiniest flicker, just a hint of a glimmer, of hope. Dangerous, reckless, life-giving hope. "According to the little that Dr. Thompson could decipher, this is the Ritual of Fire. It purifies a person's soul, kind of like restoring it to factory settings, and makes it completely untouchable. If we do this ritual...we wipe away the claim Beelzebub has on your soul, and we make it so that he can never use it for anything."

The disbelief on Dean's face was plain as day. He was starting to wonder if maybe he was actually way more drunk than he thought he was. Surely he had to be imagining this entire conversation. "There's no way a ritual like that exists, Sam," he said, shaking his head. "Somebody would have found it over the course of history. Do you know how many people who sold their souls to crossroads demons would have killed to have their hands on something like that?"

Sam shook his head. "These rituals are scary ancient, Dean, both of them. They were just unearthed in an archaeological dig in Israel a few months ago, and honestly, that can't be a coincidence. My guess is the angels have something to do with it, because Beelzebub trying to kill Lucifer and take over the world…that sounds like something they'd get involved in. Either way... someone wanted us to find this. Someone wanted us to fight back."

"It's like the damn apocalypse all over again," Dean said, shaking his head and pinching the bridge of his nose. His head was pounding.

"But Dean, this is really good news," Sam said, unable to contain his excitement. "We have a lead now. We try to get this Ritual of Fire translated, and while we do that, we search for the ingredients for the Ritual of the Stars and try to stop Beelzebub from getting everything that he needs to bust open Lucifer's Cage. It doesn't matter if he has your soul if he doesn't have everything else, too."

"Sam…," Dean started, staring at all of this info, his voice trailing. Then he looked up at his brother, and for the first time in God knew how long, he felt the familiar ache of hope. Every word he'd been about to say, about how this was a ridiculous mission with a laughably low possibility of success, fell from his mind.

Instead, with his resolve strengthened, he nodded at his brother. "Let's get to work."

**As you can see, my rusty trusty laptop has survived, thanks to the technological prowess of my genius engineer mother. Updates for dayz. **

**Until Saturday! ~ Lacey :)**


	56. Chapter 56: A Light In The Dark

_Chapter 56: A Light In The Dark_

When Sophie opened her eyes the next morning, she blinked at all of the light hitting her in the face. Why on earth was it so bright? She didn't have any windows in her room in the bunker.

She blinked again, and then in a flash, she remembered where she was.

She sat up quickly, rubbing her eyes. Why was it so damn bright? She never slept late enough for it to be this bright when she woke up. Her eyes scanned the room, and she was surprised to see that Remy was nowhere to be found. She hadn't imagined that he'd been with her, right? This wasn't all just some crazy, anger-induced dream? Her gaze moved to the clock, and when she saw the time, she jumped out of bed.

Ten in the morning? She hadn't slept till ten since…ever.

And where the hell was Remy?

Eventually deciding that she should just take advantage of her alone time, she quickly grabbed her backpack and went into the bathroom, grabbing her toiletries out of the bag and the outfit she would be changing into, and then she quickly stepped into the shower.

The hot water pounding onto her skin was the most refreshing thing she had felt in what seemed like years. She wished there was a soap that could wash away her anger, and her sadness, and her fear. But since there wasn't, she was going to have to let the calming rhythm of the shower slowly wind her down.

After about fifteen minutes, she finally turned off the water and hopped out, drying herself off and throwing on her clothes, a pair of jeans, a black tank top, and a red and white plaid shirt thrown over the top of it, unbuttoned. She pulled on the dirty old white Converse she'd been wearing when she left the bunker, and then shoved the rest of her stuff back in her backpack and walked out of the bathroom.

She was in the middle of throwing her half-dried hair up into a ponytail when she saw that Remy had returned. He was looking aimlessly out the window, his back to her when she walked out. "Hey," she said, and he turned as she pulled her hair tie off her wrist. "How come you didn't wake me up? I told you I wanted to get up early."

He looked at her carefully, and she was surprised to see a searching look on his face. "You didn't sleep very well," he noted. "I figured you needed a few extra hours."

She finished her ponytail and raised an eyebrow. "I didn't sleep well? What do you mean? I slept like a rock."

"You talked a bit," he said slowly. "You were sort of…yelling. I had to calm you down or else you'd have woken up the whole city."

She just stared at him. "I was yelling?" she asked. "I don't remember any of this."

"Don't worry about it," Remy said, waving her concerns away. "I took care of it."

The unsaid words hung between them. _I took care of you_. She continued to stare at him. "How?" she asked, unwilling to let the subject go.

"It's a guardian angel thing. I can sort of absorb your nightmares if I'm close by to you." He shrugged. "It's really not a big deal. Coffee?"

Sophie just looked at him, mouth partially hung open in shock, as he gestured to the two cups of coffee sitting on top of the boxy TV that the motel had provided for them. Wordlessly, she walked over and grabbed one, tasting it and finding it to have the perfect sugar to cream to coffee ratio, which was really hard to achieve for someone who more often than not preferred her coffee black. She just looked up at Remy over the top of the cup. "You kind of scare me, Remy," she said honestly.

He cracked a grin. "You kind of scare me, too, Ace."

With a shake of her head, she made her way over to her phone, which was still plugged into the wall. She picked it up and gave the screen one look before groaning.

"What?" Remy asked.

"I have about ten missed calls from my dad," she replied. "And even more from Sam." She didn't include the five missed calls and half dozen texts from Jack, asking her why she wasn't at school and if she was okay. She sent a quick text that simply stated _I'm fine_ before shoving the phone in her pocket.

"Well," Remy started in the kind of voice that immediately promised a lecture, "obviously they're worried. You've been gone for twenty-four hours, with no contact whatsoever. They're likely to assume the worst."

"They know I'm fine," she snapped. "If something had happened to me, you would've gone and told them."

"Still. If my child had been gone for a day after an angry falling out, I'm sure I'd still be concerned even if I knew she was physically fine."

"Yeah, well, you don't have children, so this isn't your problem," Sophie dismissed him. He rolled his eyes, and she unplugged her phone and grabbed her keys. "Are you ready to go?"

"I'm assuming you won't tell me where we're going?" Remy asked sardonically.

"Where's the fun in that?"

He gave her a quick half smile. "Just give me one second." And then, before Sophie could protest, he peeled off the Henley he'd been wearing and tossed it into the corner of the room. Sophie lowered her eyes away from his body, but she hadn't missed how muscled his torso was and how toned his biceps were. She thought about Jack, and how he would be livid standing in this room with her, and she quickly tried to think of something else, anything else besides how ridiculously hot Remy looked shirtless.

An angel, she reminded herself. He is an angel. He is creepily older than you. That is not even his own actual body.

Once she had collected her wits, she lifted her head back up to see that he had pulled on a white T-shirt that fit him perfectly and was in the process of zipping up a grey hoodie. Once he was done, he turned back towards her, and even though he wasn't acknowledging her intentional silence, the smile in his eyes told her that he'd known she had looked at him.

"_Now _I'm ready. Let's go."

* * *

Driving through Asheville after not being there for years was the strangest experience for Sophie.

The city was just as familiar to her now as it was foreign. She'd drive down a street that she and her mom had gone down every single day back when Sophie was little, and she'd see so many of the same places that she'd seen as a child, but they were all a little bit different. Buildings had been updated, or new businesses had come in and taken over the old ones. Nothing was significantly different, but nothing was quite the same either.

It shouldn't have really surprised her. After all, she hadn't been in Asheville since she was probably about ten, around the time her mom had met Steve. A lot could change in six years. But still, the odd combination of foreign and familiar was jarring to her, and she was silent as she drove herself through winding streets of the city that used to be her home.

For the first time since she had met him, Remy was utterly silent. He seemed to realize that this trip meant something to her, and she didn't want to waste it with idle chatter. So they drove in a strangely comfortable silence until finally, they ended up at a storage unit center.

When she parked, Remy looked at her in confusion. "Why are we here?"

She didn't say anything at first, leaning over and grabbing her backpack out of the back of the car, searching around for her wallet. She opened it up and searched in it for a moment before pulling out a key. "I've carried this around with me for years," she said, staring at it in the palm of her hand. "When my mom died, she left it to me in her will. When we moved to Apex to live with Steve, she couldn't bring a lot of the things we'd collected over the years with us, but she was such a hoarder that she didn't really want to throw any of it away or give it to someone else. So she put it all in a storage unit here. Unit 8B."

Remy nodded, eyeing her closely. "Do you want me to stay here?" he asked seriously.

Sophie looked up at him in surprise. The fact that he offered to stay behind both shocked her and touched her. It was the first time since being bonded to her that he had asked her if she wanted some privacy. "No," she said, almost surprising herself, too. "No, you can come."

He nodded, and they both stepped out of the car, making their way towards the long rows of storage units. She found row B and walked down silently until she found unit 8B. She stood in front of it, staring at it like it could explode at any moment.

"Do you think this is stupid?" she asked suddenly, turning to Remy.

He ran a hand through his golden hair, his eyes narrowed as he stared at the storage unit. She watched him carefully, analyzing his every movement, trying to gauge his reaction. "I think this will dredge up unnecessary pain for you," he admitted honestly. "I think it will remind you of a time long in your past that you can never have again. But I also think it is special to have something so close to your heart, and I think it would be stupid to let yourself forget it."

The words sunk into her mind, and then with a burst of resolution, she stepped forward and unlocked the unit, pulling the door upward and looking inside.

The first thing that she noticed was all the dust. It was settled on every surface in the small dark storage unit, and immediately she sneezed. Remy gave her a sideways glance, but said nothing.

She took two steps into the unit, which held some boxes and a few pieces of furniture. The first thing her eyes were drawn to was an old recliner. She knew that recliner very well. It had been her mom's bed for about five months, when they'd shared a one bedroom apartment with her mom's high school best friend when Sophie had been about five. Her mom had absolutely refused to let Sophie go without a bed, so she'd made her daughter take the tiny pull out couch in the living room while she spent every night in the armchair. Her friend took the tiny bedroom in the apartment because she was paying two thirds of the rent.

They'd gotten their own apartment after that, once Sophie's mom had gotten a job as a paralegal at a local law firm, a job that could pay for a decent two-bedroom apartment in a safe neighborhood. But they'd kept that armchair. Sophie's mom always called it her old friend.

Sophie made her way farther into the unit, and the next thing she saw was a tiny rocking chair, meant for a small child. She walked over to it, running her fingers gently over the top of it. The white paint on it was starting to come off, and her named had been painted in fading pink cursive at the top of the chair. _Sophia Marybeth_.

Sophie looked back at Remy, who was still standing at the entrance to the unit, watching her. She offered him a small grin. "My mom's dad made this for me when I was born," she said quietly. "He died pretty soon after that. Cancer. I was always so sad that I never got to know him."

Remy's eyes never left her, but he said nothing. She moved on to one of the boxes stacked against the wall, and she grabbed the first one she could get her hands on and opened it up. When she looked inside, an unexpected laugh found its way out of her mouth.

She turned to Remy, who was looking at her with a bemused expression. She pulled the first item out of the box, a tiny pink onesie with a bunch of ridiculous lace on it. "My baby clothes," she laughed. A grin touched Remy's face as he watched her sift through her old clothes. "God, Mom, I can't believe you kept all this," she whispered under her breath, a telltale lump beginning to form in her throat.

Over the course of the next hour, she looked through boxes and took a long, painful, funny, joyful, and melancholy trip down memory lane. She unearthed all sorts of strange items from her childhood—her baby blanket, the stuffed kitty named Lion that she hadn't been able to part with until they moved in with Steve, her first report card. She found the ticket stubs from that time her mom had taken her to a Braves game, the tiny soccer jersey from the one year she'd decided to play a sport, the mix CD of popular 90's songs her mom had listened to a million times over in her car.

Seeing all of this now was so strange for Sophie, like looking into another life. And maybe she sort of was. After all, her life now was so drastically separated from the life she'd lived with her mom that they weren't even comparable. She loved both of the lives with all she had, but deep down, she knew they couldn't coexist.

It was the last box, the smallest one shoved in the farthest corner, that hit Sophie the hardest. She opened it up, wondering what on earth could be inside, and when she saw what it was, she froze.

Pictures. They were pictures. Her mom had been crazy about pictures, always wanting to document every second of Sophie's life. The box was filled with them, some loosely lying in piles in the box, others organized into little albums. She couldn't even look at all of them because tears were already pooling in her eyes.

The only one she could focus on was the one sitting right on top. Sophie remembered the day it was taken. She had been eight, about to go away to summer camp for a week, and she'd been wearing her camp T-shirt and a pair of jean shorts with pink flowers stitched onto them. Her hair had been more blonde than red then, and in the picture it was braided into pigtails. Sophie was sitting on top of her giant suitcase, and her mom was hugging her from behind, her beautiful red hair falling down around her face in soft curls as she looked down at Sophie's smiling face, the latter of whom was staring directly at the camera. She couldn't remember who her mom had gotten to take the picture, but that didn't matter. All she could think about was that one, tiny moment of pure bliss, captured in the photo. A little forever locked into a polaroid.

Sophie sniffed, putting the top back on the box, forcing her tears back. She couldn't cry in front of Remy. She cleared her throat and took a deep breath, tucking the small box of photos under her arm. "Okay," she said, turning around and looking back at Remy. His eyes were filled with a sadness, like he knew the emotions she was feeling and wished he could do something about it. "I'm ready to go now."

He nodded, and she walked back to the entrance of the storage unit. As she did, she passed by Lion, her stuffed kitty, sitting forlornly on the top of a pile of boxes. On instinct, she reached up and grabbed him, shoving him under her arm on top of the box with the pictures. "Okay, _now _I'm ready to go," she said when she finally made it back to Remy, looking up at him.

"Okay," he said, grinning at her. It was a warm smile, softer than any of the smirks and half-grins he usually threw her way. "Off we go."

* * *

There was only one more stop on Sophie's list. And when she told Remy what it was, he even let her drive there by herself.

She was going to go visit her mom.

Caroline Gardner's funeral had not been a good experience for Sophie. And how could it have been? Her mother had just been ripped away from life, and Sophie had been there in the car to witness it. Up until that point, it had been the very worst thing that had ever happened to her.

But it was still Sophie's biggest regret that she had treated her mother's funeral more as an event to wallow in grief than an opportunity to say goodbye to her mother. There had never been a sense of closure, a sense of finality and ending.

After the funeral, she'd never gone back to her mother's grave. She hadn't wanted to face that reality again. So she'd hopped into Steve's car and never looked back.

And now she had driven sixteen hours in a haze of anger just to be sitting here, in front of her mother's grave, with an opportunity to talk.

But she didn't know what to say.

She looked at the headstone. _Caroline Elizabeth Gardner. A mother and a daughter. A light in the dark. _Sophie thought about that. A light in the dark. That had been her mom, that's for sure. A safe, warm home in a cold, uncertain world.

She sat down in front of the headstone, staring at the headstone. "Hey Mom," she said softly. "I'm sorry this is the first time I've visited you. It's been a weird couple of years."

She paused, almost expecting there to be some sort of reply. Only silence greeted her, along with the cool brush of wind on her face.

"I don't know if you've been keeping tabs on me, but I found my dad. Dean. I get it now, why you had a thing with him. He's a pretty cool guy." She shook her head. "No, actually, he's a great person. The best. Except for when he makes horrible decisions. I don't know if you've heard, but he recently signed away his soul to a demon that wants to break the Devil out of his Cage in Hell. You sure knew how to pick 'em." She choked out a humorless laugh. "Bet you never thought you'd hear me say any of that, did you?"

The wind was her only answer yet again. She could hear leaves blowing across the grass, and she frowned. "I miss you, Mom," she said quietly. "I miss you a lot. But I think I'd miss you a lot more if it weren't for Dad. And Sam. He's my uncle. I think you would have liked him." She paused for a moment and sighed. "Not to say I don't miss you so much every day that it physically hurts. Because I do." She cringed. She was so bad at this.

She sat in quiet for a moment, collecting her thoughts. "I just want you to be proud of me, Mom," she whispered. "I can never tell if the person I am is the person you wanted me to be. I'm scared of growing up without you. I'm scared of forgetting you and forgetting who you wanted me to be. I'm scared of becoming someone who you wouldn't want as a daughter. And I know people change and that's life but…I don't know, I feel like more has changed for me than it has for most people."

She let out a long sigh. "I know what you'd say, though," she said with a laugh. "You'd say that I'm stronger than I ever could imagine, and that I can do more than just catch the curveballs, I can knock them out of the park." She stared at the headstone for a few more moments. "And you'd tell me that you will always be proud of me," she said in a choked voice. "And you'd tell me that you love me. And I'd tell you that I love you, too."

And that's when she started crying. Really crying. The choked pains in her chest were dissolving and dissipating in the form of tears, and she sat there, clutching her knees to her chest as if they were her lifeline. A million thoughts were flying through her head, all jumbled together nonsensically. Being tied up by the vampire Sebastian and learning about the existence of the supernatural world, going off to summer camp when she was eight, looking up after Cas had healed her in the motel in Lincoln to see her dad clutching her after thinking she was dead, driving down a long highway in the back of the Impala with Sam and Dean as they listened to some old Creedence Clearwater Revival track, driving down a slick road in the rain with her mom and screaming as a car came hurtling at them without showing any signs of slowing down—

Suddenly, there was an arm around her, and she didn't have to look up to know that it was Remy. He was silent, and he just sat by her and held her with one arm as she cried. She didn't even care that she was crying loudly and with abandon, as if she'd never cried before. Everything was hitting her at once, and even though Remy's presence helped her keep some of her mind together, she felt like she was losing it.

Remy's arm tightened as her cries grew louder, and he pulled her gently into him, her head falling on his shoulder. His hand rubbed gentle circles on her shoulder as she cried her heart out, letting the sobs run their course.

After a length of time Sophie had no way of being able to determine, she finally had cried all her tears. She lifted her head up from Remy's shoulder, turning her watery eyes to him. "I didn't mean to—"

"Don't," he said in a soft voice. "Never apologize for grief."

She just nodded, sniffling and wiping her face. Shakily, she stood up from the ground and wiped a few stray pieces of grass off of her body. Remy followed her up to his feet, looking at her closely. "I could leave again, if you want," he said quietly.

She shook her head. "No, that's fine. I'm ready to go."

With that, she pulled her flannel shirt tighter around her body, even though it was fairly warm for a November day in North Carolina, and made her way back to the car.

* * *

Sophie and Remy went back to the motel, where Sophie quickly packed up all of her stuff and decided that it was time to go home.

"Are you sure?" Remy asked her as she flitted around the room like a madwoman, throwing her clothes into her backpack and tidying up the place. "Even if we leave now, we won't get back to the bunker until five in the morning."

"I'm sure," she said, zipping up her backpack. "I got what I came here for. And it doesn't matter how long I stay gone, I'm still going to be mad at my dad. Might as well be mad at him while I'm in a position to try to save his ass from eternal damnation."

Remy grinned. "That's the spirit."

"Besides," she said, tossing him the keys to her car and smirking at him, "you've got the first driving shift."

He chuckled. "Sure thing, milady."

Sophie opened the door to the room, looking back at Remy over her shoulder. "I am _not_ your lady."

"Nope," he said as he adjusted the jacket he was wearing. "Just my human."

She turned back around to leave, but not before a smile crept onto her face.

* * *

They checked out of the motel and hopped into the car, Sophie leaning back in the passenger seat and playing with the radio until she found a today's hits station. Remy scoffed as he pulled out of the parking lot, listening to some new pop-rap remix that had become really popular. "No wonder your father thinks so little of your musical taste. This is terrible."

"Oh, please, says the angel who likes country music."

"For your information, country music is the most genuine art form on this planet."

Sophie almost choked on her laugh it came out so fast. "Are you serious? All country music is about is God, girls, booze, and trucks."

"Is that not the most accurate representation of the human race?"

Sophie just shook her head. "You look like such a badass and you drive a motorcycle to school every single day, but you like country music. Unbelievable."

"Well, you're the daughter and the niece of the two most famous hunters in the world, and your idea of musical finesse is any kind boy band, so that makes you unbelievable as well."

"Yeah, well I'm a teenage girl and you're an angel, so trust me, you're much more unbelievable."

He just shrugged. "Fine. But we're not listening to this crap. Driver picks the music."

"Shotgun shuts his cakehole," Sophie mumbled under her breath with a tiny smirk, repeating the line she'd heard a million times.

"Sure, whatever," Remy conceded, clueless to the significance of her response. "Either way, you're going to get educated on true music." He quickly flipped it over to a country station, and at Sophie's groan, he gave her a look. "Oh, come on. You do know Taylor Swift was originally country, right? Have some respect."

"She was my one exception," Sophie complained. "Everything else is…bleh."

Remy just shook his head. "You'll learn to love it."

She just rolled her eyes and let him drive. She was hesitant to admit it to herself, but riding with Remy was a little enjoyable. After a few hours, she realized they had more to talk about than she thought they might. They couldn't talk about books like she did with Jack, primarily because Remy didn't have half the passion for them that she and Jack did, but they still could talk about other things. Sophie bombarded him with questions about Heaven and his angel friend Ariel that he always talked so much about, and he asked her about her life with Sam and Dean and how she felt about hunting.

It was strange, the amount that they didn't have in common, but how easy it was to talk about it.

As the sun went down, Remy pulled off the highway and into the parking lot of a small burger joint. "You're hungry," he said.

"What, you're using our weird angel connection to determine my level of hunger now?" Sophie asked, unbuckling her seatbelt as he parked the car.

"No, Ace," Remy said impatiently. "Your stomach is rumbling."

She looked down at her stomach, the perpetrator, patting it softly. "Oh." Then she just shrugged and opened the door to her car, stepping out of it and stretching. "Well, either way, you're right. Let's get me some food and then go back on our way."

They walked into the burger joint. "Sure," Remy said, and then he tossed her the car keys. "But you're driving the next shift."

She caught the keys and nodded. "Fine. Get ready for four plus hours of the best of today's hits, coming your way."

Remy groaned as they made their way to the cash register to order. "Come on, admit my country wasn't _that _bad."

"No, it was bad," Sophie said, and then she flounced up to the counter and proceeded to order a burger and a Coke. She turned her head. "Want anything?" she asked. Remy looked taken aback. He shook his head, and Sophie turned around. "He'll take a burger and a Coke, too."

The girl at the cash register just rang up her order, let her pay, and then made her way into the kitchen. Remy stood next to Sophie, hands in his pockets. "You know I don't need to eat, don't you?"

"I know," Sophie said. "But I know you _can _eat. And you can't turn down a burger on a road trip, you just can't."

Remy just let out a long breath. "Fine, Ace. Whatever you say."

"Now that's what I like to hear," Sophie replied victoriously.

"You're insufferable sometimes."

The girl came back with their food and Sophie grabbed it before heading to a table. "Don't pretend that you're better than cheap burgers. Because no one is better than cheap burgers."

"Well actually, I'm an angel," he said, offering her a lopsided grin that reached his eyes. "So yes, I am better than cheap burgers. I'm better than most things on this planet."

"So humble," Sophie laughed, taking a bite of her burger. She chewed thoughtfully. "Your ego is unreal."

"Actually, for an angel, I'm one of the humblest," he argued, taking a bite of his burger and seeming to decide that it was kind of good before taking another.

"Humble people don't call themselves the humblest," she pointed out. "And also, they don't drive motorcycles to school every day. What is even with that anyway? What kind of angel drives a motorcycle?"

"A hot one," Remy replied, a mischievous glint in his eyes, prompting an eye roll from Sophie. "No, actually, I knew I needed a way to get to and from school. And my last charge…you know, the Russian guy who was hellbent on murdering his family…he used to drive a motorcycle and I always saw the appeal in it. So I figured, why not."

Sophie nodded. "So where do you live?" she asked. "Where do you go to and from before and after school?"

"There's a crappy little cabin in the woods a few miles from school," Remy said. "I go there and park the bike and hang out a little bit. Sometimes I'll stay over there, but usually I'll just go back to Heaven, say hi to Ariel, make sure I keep the house in order. You know, behind the scenes angel stuff."

"Behind the scenes angel stuff. Gotcha," Sophie repeated, taking a long, thoughtful drink of soda. "Hey, Remy."

"What?"

"You should teach me how to drive a motorcycle," Sophie mused.

She expected Remy to call her crazy and immediately shoot down her request. But he just considered it. "Sure. You just can't tell your dad. Because he's promised to do some very creative things to me with his angel blade if I let anything bad happen to you, and this would probably qualify."

"Well, he forgot to tell me about handing his soul over to Beelzebub, so I can forget to tell him that my guardian angel is giving me motorcycle lessons."

"And what about Boyfriend?" Remy asked, eyebrow raised. "How's he going to feel about that?"

Sophie's eyebrows knit themselves together. "Well, he doesn't need to know either. But speaking of him, you're sort of an asshole to him."

"What can I say, the kid rubs me the wrong way."

"Why?" Sophie asked, honestly curious. "Jack's literally the easiest person in the world to get along with. Why are you so determined not to like him?"

Remy just stared at her, his eyes locked onto hers. Finally he just shook his head. "Are you done yet?"

She sighed. "Yeah, fine, let's go."

They tossed out their trash as they left the burger joint, and Sophie took out the car keys and slid into the driver's seat. She turned on the car and immediately started tinkering with the radio stations, searching for a pop station that would annoy Remy. Then she waited for him to get in, smirked at his irritated expression at her music choice, and then pulled out of the parking lot and made her way back to the highway.

They drove in relative silence for a while as Sophie poorly sang along to a few songs, and then out of the blue, Remy said, "I think you need to cut Dean some slack."

She just looked over at him in shock, turning down the volume of the radio. "What?"

He shifted in his seat, looking as uncomfortable as she'd ever seen him. "Look, I'm your guardian angel, not your therapist. I'm not exactly required to give you my two cents when it comes to stuff like this. But…your father is a great man. I've seen what he's done with his life, and he's sacrificed a lot to save a lot of people. And he might not have gone about this whole thing the right way, but it was with the intention of shielding you from pain."

"I can't believe you're even bringing this up," she grumbled. "Here I was, thinking that maybe we were finally getting along—"

"I'm serious, Ace," Remy persisted. "If you go back and give him the cold shoulder for the rest of the time you have with him, you're going to regret it."

She shot him a glare. "You don't get to tell me what I will or won't regret," she snapped. "And who the hell are you to even be lecturing me on this?"

"I'm someone with your best interests at heart," he said.

She was about to yell something back at him, but then something distracted her. It was the soft vibrating of her phone in her pocket, and quickly she fished it out and looked at the screen. When she saw who it was, her eyes narrowed. "Speak of the devil," she muttered, staring at Dean's number, which had popped up onto the screen under the name _Dad_. She vivdly remembered the day she had changed it from Dean to Dad, a change she'd made with a smile on her face.

Now it just caused her heart to hurt more.

"Answer it," Remy said.

"No."

"Sophie. You don't need to pour out your soul to him and hash it out over the phone. You just need to let him know you're alive."

She waited two more rings, glancing over at Remy and then shaking her head. "No," she said again, declining the call.

Remy looked frustrated. "You're being ridiculous."

Sophie could feel herself growing angrier. "No I'm not! Can't you just let me be mad, Remy? I deserve to be mad! I deserve to be a little bit upset about how things are turning out in my life right now!"

"Keep your eyes on the road, Ace," Remy sighed as a car passed by them, very close to crossing into their lane.

"Then stop lecturing me!" Sophie snapped. "No offense, but you're an angel, and you guys suck at processing emotions. So just let me process my own damn emot—"

"Sophie, _watch out_!"

Sophie whipped her head over just in time to see a giant truck careening over into her lane, one of its tires blown out. She immediately swerved to avoid colliding head on with it, jerking the car off the road. She tried to hit the breaks to stop her momentum, but it was too late. "Remy!" she screamed as the car lurched into the ditch on the side of the highway, unable to stay on all four wheels as it flipped once, twice, three times, before smashing into a tree on Sophie's side of the car. The moment they made impact with the tree, she felt her body explode in agony, and she screamed as her world was filled broken glass and twisted metal and blood and pain.

The last thing she saw before everything swirled into darkness was a flash of bright white light, and two green-gray eyes, filled with fear.

**Much longer chapter than usual today. I hope it didn't disappoint. ~ Lacey :)**


	57. Chapter 57: She Needs You

_Chapter 57: She Needs You_

Sam and Dean had been researching both the Ritual of the Stars and the Ritual of Fire for the entire day, Dean perhaps more feverishly than Sam. He called Sophie every hour, but she still wasn't responding, so to try and distract himself from her increasingly notable absence he threw himself into lore, trying to find some way to translate the second ritual so that they could somehow make his soul unobtainable.

He was exhausted. He was running on about two hours of sleep, three cups of coffee, and God only knew how much alcohol. But he couldn't take a break, even though Sam had told him he should. It didn't really matter if he took a break anyway. He wasn't going to have a single restful moment until Sophie was back and they could try to work through their whole situation.

But for now, he could research.

He and Sam sat at the main table in the bunker, pouring over books and transcripts and anything they could find that the Men of Letters might've had on these rituals. But so far, they weren't coming up with anything.

Finally, as the night began to grow older, Sam sat up and heaved a big breath. "Dean, I think we need to call it a day."

Dean just looked at his brother like he was insane. "It's not even midnight yet."

"Yeah, but you've nearly been awake for forty-eight hours, maybe more, and there's nothing we're going to find right now that wouldn't help us just the same if we found it after a few hours of sleep." For the first time that night, Dean noticed that Sam looked exhausted, too. He knew that this had to be worrying his brother almost as much as it worried him. "We have six whole months to figure this out, Dean, and we're going to do it. Let's just not kill ourselves before we do."

Dean just nodded, wanting to keep going but feeling the fatigue starting to win. "Okay. Fine. I'm just going to try Cas one more time."

"Yeah, what the hell is he doing? He usually gets back to us at least a day after we call him," Sam noted, stacking up all the books he'd been skimming through.

Dean shrugged. "Who knows with him? Maybe he's at some twenty-four hour day spa in Heaven, rejuvenating his wing muscles or something—"

As if the universe had been listening to him, suddenly there was a rustling of wings, and Dean could feel the presence of someone else in the room behind him. Both he and Sam turned toward the person at the same time. "Cas, finally—" Dean started.

But then he saw who it was. And he froze.

It was Eremiel. Covered in blood.

Dean didn't even have control over his body at that point. All he knew was that seeing his daughter's guardian angel appear alone, without her, looking like he'd just been mauled by a tiger, could not mean anything good. Immediately he launched himself at the angel, Sam's protests blending into the loud rushing of angry blood pounding in Dean's ears, and suddenly Eremiel was against a wall, his face blank, Dean's forearm pushed up against his neck. "Where is Sophie?" Dean asked through gritted teeth. "Why haven't you told us where you two were?"

Eremiel regarded him with an emotionless look in his eyes. "She needed space from you. I tried to respect that and watch over her."

"Where is she?" Dean asked again harshly. "All of that blood on you—"

"Is mostly mine," Eremiel assured him quickly. "But you two need to get in your car and drive to St. Louis, Missouri, now."

"Why?" Sam asked, stepping forward and pulling Dean off of the angel. "What's going on?"

"Car accident," Eremiel said hurriedly. "I did what I could, but Sophie was taken to a hospital in St. Louis. I think one of the doctors said they have to rush her to surgery, I don't know, medical stuff confuses the hell out of me."

Dean just stared at him blankly, absorbing his words. "You did what you could," he repeated like he was reading off a script, like it was a foreign language. Then he exploded. "You're a goddamn angel!" he roared. "You're her _guardian_! You have heavenly mojo coming out of your ass! Why the hell didn't you prevent this?"

"I've told you a million times," Eremiel said, and now a hint of emotion was coming into his voice, and he was angry. "I can wipe out a demon that comes her way or possesses her, I can blow the head off a vampire trying to take a bite out of her neck, I can protect her from everything that wants to kill her, _but I cannot make choices for her_. She was driving while she was pissed off, and a truck coming towards us blew a tire, and it all happened in a matter of seconds. She should've died on the spot, but I was able to keep her alive until the helicopter got there—"

"Helicopter?" Sam exclaimed, eyes widening. "Dean, I'm grabbing our crap, we need to go."

As Sam turned and left the room in a flash, it started to sink in for Dean how serious this was, and he immediately grabbed the keys to the Impala out of his pocket and looked for his phone. "How come you didn't just heal her?" he snapped as he lifted up piles of books in a rush, finally finding it under a stack of essays he'd found on medieval rituals.

"Guardians aren't exactly the most powerful angels," Eremiel replied with a wistful, humorless grin. "Our powers lie in our connection to our charges. The healing that I'm able to do is minimal. When I'm bound to a charge, I can't even properly heal myself when she's hurt this badly. I'm trying to funnel all of my remaining power into her right now. But I needed to come here to speak with you first. Because she needs you."

At that, Dean took a good look at the angel. He had cuts all over his face, and he was holding himself so that it looked like maybe either his arm was broken or his shoulder was dislocated. There was a huge bloodstain on his side, where it looked like maybe he'd been impaled with a large shard of glass. But the whole time he expressed no outward signs of pain, nothing but steely grit and determination in his eyes. At a moment like this, it was hard for Dean to see him as an angel and not as just a really hurt kid.

"You look like you could use a hospital, too," he grumbled, looking over his shoulder to see Sam hurrying back from his room, carrying a duffle that he knew had clothes for the both of them.

Eremiel just shook his head. "These wounds are nothing, just uncomfortable to me. I might not be the caliber of angel that Castiel is, but I'm still immortal." He straightened himself up, wincing slightly. "You two get going. Sophie will live, I'll make sure of it. But her condition is still serious right now, and she needs you. Even if she won't say it right now, she needs you."

And then he was gone.

* * *

The drive to St. Louis, though shorter than many of the routes they took to their cases, was one of the longest and most tense drives Dean had ever experienced. He and Sam had both tried calling Cas about a dozen times, and Dean had even shot up a few prayers, but after hours of resounding silence, it looked like they were on their own for this one.

By the time they'd pulled up to the hospital, it was nearing five in the morning. Dean slammed the door shut when he got out of the Impala, Sam close behind him. They both hurried through the parking garage entrance into the hospital, which was shockingly crowded for five A.M. They made their way to the nearest info desk, at which sat a disgruntled looking man in his mid-forties. He looked up at Sam and Dean, taking in their grave expressions with a bored look. "Can I help you?"

"We're looking for a girl who was MedEvac-ed here in a helicopter a little before midnight," Sam said quickly. "Sophie Winchester. She's sixteen, probably came in with a kid named Remy, we—"

"Alright, calm down sir, one second," the man said, clearly annoyed with them, as he clicked at his computer to find some information. Dean narrowed his eyes at the man, not in the mood to deal with someone like this right now, not when he was insanely deprived of sleep and worried sick about his daughter. "Well, it looks like she was in surgery for a bit and then was taken to recovery…no, wait, she just went back into surgery about thirty minutes ago."

Dean lurched forward, trying to get a look at the screen. "Why? What happened? How is she?"

"Look, sir, I know this is difficult," the man started monotonously, as if he had given this speech a million times, "but you need to wait until I can get a doctor to come out here and talk to you. I really don't know anything about this—"

"_How the hell is my daughter doing_?_" _Dean yelled at the man, slamming his fist down on the receptionist's desk. The man jumped, eyes wide and scared at the chilling look on Dean's face. Every single person sitting in the waiting room looked over at Dean both uneasily and with pity.

Dean felt Sam's hand grab his shoulder. "Dean, man, come on. Let's find someone who can tell us something. Let this one go."

Dean gave the man one last glare and then shrugged Sam's hand off of him. "Fine," he barked. He turned and followed Sam away, down a hall. He looked into each room they passed, as if Sophie would be sitting in one of them, waiting for her dad and uncle to show up.

Finally, they ran into a tall, slender woman in scrubs, her blonde hair tied up into a loose bun, her eyes on a clipboard. If Dean hadn't been sick with worry over Sophie, he would've immediately starting hitting on her. As it was, he quickly stepped to the side and inserted himself in between the woman and her destination, and she looked up in surprise, her brown eyes widening in shock. "Excuse me, sir, but I don't think you're supposed to be down this hall."

"Listen, miss," Dean started. "My kid is here somewhere, and I need to know how she's doing or where she is or…or…."

"I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to give out any information about our patients," she said, sounding truly apologetic. "I just can't, it's against hospital policy."

"Please," Dean said, and he wanted to slap himself at the borderline pathetic desperation in his voice. "Please, I just need to know if she's going to be alright."

The woman searched his face, and he knew he had her when a shadow of pity crossed her features. "I… okay. Sure. I can't tell you much though. What's her name?"

"Sophie Winchester."

The woman bit her lip and started flipping through the papers on her clipboard. "Um…Sophie, Sophie, Sophie…." Then she nodded. "The teenager?"

"Yeah," Dean said, heart pounding.

"Okay, well, good news is, she's not critical anymore," she told him kindly. "Which, to be honest, is a miracle, because it looks like when they flew her in things were not looking good for her."

Dean made a mental note to thank Eremiel later. "And the bad news?"

"She was just taken back into surgery about thirty minutes ago. Looks like there was a complication from her first surgery they needed to go back in and fix. Her prognosis is good, but there are still risks, like there are with any surgery. And her recovery time might be longer."

"What did she need surgery for? What…what happened, how bad was it, what….?"

The woman glanced back at her clipboard. "The surgeries were to try and stop the internal bleeding and repair some of the damage caused by a traumatic brain injury. They also did some surgery on her left leg, which suffered a severe fracture. And then there was a partial splenectomy—"

"Gesundheit," Dean said reflexively.

Sam rolled his eyes as the woman gave a tiny grin. "They had to remove a part of her spleen that was ruptured in the accident. Luckily, they didn't have to remove the whole spleen because a part broke off in the accident, which means the part that's left should regenerate on its own time—"

"Organs do that?" Dean asked, partially disgusted.

"Some," she replied. "It might mean some lifestyle changes, since the spleen is connected to the immune system, so something as simple as the common cold can become a little more serious but…." Suddenly she shook her head. "I'm so sorry, Mr. Winchester, I'm really just a nurse and the only information I know is on this clipboard. A doctor will definitely be speaking with you once your daughter is out of surgery and situated in a room so that you have a better idea."

Dean felt the fear in his chest start to dissipate, and when he glanced at Sam, he saw that his brother was feeling the same way. "But…she's going to be okay?"

The woman gave him a small smile. "If I had to guess based off of what I see on this clipboard, yes. She was incredibly lucky."

"Yeah. Lucky," he muttered, letting his muscles relax. "Do you know when she'll be out of surgery?"

"I don't," the nurse said. "I'd guess soon, though."

Dean nodded. "Well…thanks, doc."

She offered him a warm look. "Just don't tell my boss I told you this, because I definitely was not supposed to and I could get fired just for having this conversation, so…."

Dean gave a tired grin. "What conversation?" he asked with a wink.

The woman gave him a grateful smile. "I hope everything works out with your daughter," she said, and then she started walking back down the hall. Then she stopped and turned back around, an eyebrow raised as she looked at Dean. "Sophie didn't happen to come in with a guy, did she? Maybe a little older? Looks like someone sixteen-year-old me would have drooled over?"

"Yeah, she did," Dean said, lifting his head. "You seen him?"

She nodded, tucking a blonde curl behind her ear. "He's been sitting outside of the operating room all night. Won't say a word."

"That would be the one," Dean said with a deep breath. "Thanks again."

She nodded, and then turned back around and disappeared into a patient's room.

He and Sam turned to look at each other. "She's going to be fine," Sam said, both to Dean and to himself.

Dean nodded. "We should find Eremiel," he said. "He might be able to tell us more, too."

Sam agreed, and they tried to navigate their way through the giant hospital to find the operating room. It took them about ten minutes, but the moment they saw Eremiel, they knew they were in the right place.

Eremiel was sitting in one of the uncomfortable looking plastic chairs outside of the operating room, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. He was unmoving, and if Dean hadn't known better he would have thought that he was a statue.

"Hey," Dean said sharply as he neared Eremiel.

Slowly, Eremiel lifted his head. The scratches on his head had been bandaged up, and his arm was in a sling. But what surprised Dean the most was the look on his face. It was one of utter exhaustion, one that made Dean feel like in comparison he was wide awake. And if Dean, who hadn't had more than three hours of sleep in the last fifty-something hours, was less exhausted than Eremiel, then the angel must've been completely toast.

"Are you okay?" Sam asked him tentatively.

Eremiel nodded, his eyes closed.

"You don't look okay," Dean noted.

"Yeah, well, I'm funneling every drop of grace I can spare into Sophie. These dumbass doctors messed up her first surgery so now she needs extra help with this second one." He opened his eyes, and Dean was surprised at the amount of pain and determination in his eyes. "She's almost died about four times," he said, point blank, his frustration evident. "Of course, the doctors don't know that, because everything turned out perfectly for them in the OR. One of them is probably going to get a damn good raise for the miracle resurrection of the half dead girl on the table, when actually, all it took was about a half ton of angel grace." He let out a frustrated groan, and then he glared at Dean. "Dean Winchester, your daughter is something else."

Dean frowned. "I don't care what the hell she is as long as she's alive," he said sharply. Then he glanced at Sam, who gave him a disapproving look, and he relaxed. "But…thanks for keeping her that way."

"Yeah, well, it's all part of job," he said. "Except for her music taste. I did not sign up for that kind of torture."

Dean cracked a grin. "Probably should've warned you about that one."

Eremiel just shook his head and then suddenly he straightened up, eyes latching on to something in the distance. "I think the surgery's over," he said quickly. "She's… she's fine. She'll be okay." And then he leaned back in his chair, letting his head fall back against the wall as his eyes closed, breathing deeply. "I need a liquor store or two."

Sam turned to Dean. "You go find her," he said. "I'll stay with him, make sure he doesn't keel over or anything."

Dean nodded, glancing at the worn out Eremiel once more before beginning his search for Sophie.

It took him a hell of a lot longer than he wanted. First he had to track down someone from the OR who might know who Sophie was, and then he had to find out where she'd changed hands, and four more charged conversations and forty minutes later, he finally arrived at room 511, where Sophie's name was scribbled on the white board outside of the room.

Dean took a deep breath, and suddenly, he was taken back to the night he'd met Sophie. She'd been in a hospital then, too, having just been kidnapped and tortured by the bloodsucking bastard Sebastian. He remembered her standing in the corner, prepared to defend herself with syringe.

It was crazy how far in the past that seemed.

Slowly, he made his way inside of the room. The first thing he saw was Sophie's hair. It was down, falling in tangled strawberry blonde curls onto the pillow. His eyes moved to her face, and he immediately felt a knot in his throat. The left side of her head was covered in gauze and bandages, but some of the cuts snuck out from underneath the dressings, and they looked red and painful. Her left eye was also swollen, but it didn't look too bad. Her left leg was bound in a thick white cast, and he was sure that underneath her hospital gown her torso was a mess of cuts and bruises and stitches from surgery.

But his panic lessened when he saw the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of her chest. Her breathing—her normal, healthy breathing—calmed him down. She was going to be okay.

She was going to be okay.

What worried Dean was all of the tubes. There was one feeding oxygen to her through her nose, another in her arm pumping her full of nutrients. There were more wires and medical crap that he didn't understand, but he tried not to stress himself out about them. She was safe, and she was alive. That was all that mattered.

She was going to be okay.

He sat down in the chair next to her bed, thinking that maybe he would stay awake and try to make a few calls and see what the cheapest motel in a five mile radius was. But before he could even pull out his phone, his exhaustion got the better of him, and he fell straight to sleep looking at the gently breathing form of his daughter.

**As always, thank you for reading! Next chapter, perhaps there will be a reunion? Guess you'll have to wait and see ;) Until Saturday, folks! ~ Lacey :)**


	58. Chapter 58: More Than Distance

_Chapter 58: More Than Distance_

When Sophie woke up, she immediately knew she was in a hospital.

There was no moment of confusion, no terrifying '_where am I?' _thought that came to her mind. The moment she came back to consciousness, the sanitary and stale smell that she associated with hospitals greeted her nose. Even with her eyes closed, she could see the brightness behind her eyelids, and once she paid enough attention, she could hear the whirring and beeping of machines right next to her. She squeezed her eyes even more shut to try and block out the brightness, but that elicited a very painful pounding in her head, and so she lessened the tension in her eyes and tried to roll over.

And that's when she felt the rest of the pain.

She felt like every single part of her body had been trampled on by a herd of wild animals. A few target areas hurt worse than others—her head, her ribcage, her leg—and suddenly she felt panicky, wondering what the hell had happened.

Slowly, painstakingly, she opened her eyes. It took her a while to adjust to the whiteness of the room, but once she did she turned her head slightly to try and get a look at where she was. The room was pretty small, with one tiny window that had the blinds pulled down in front of it. The machines around her were being obnoxiously loud, and there was a TV hung up on the wall in front of her.

But the most important fixture in the room was the uncomfortable looking chair in which a tall, exhausted man was slumped over, head on his shoulder, eyes closed as he slept. Sitting next to him on the floor, resting in the corner of the room with his head against the wall, was another man, taller, also asleep.

Sophie immediately felt a knot in her throat, one that wouldn't go away no matter how many times she swallowed. Memories came to her swiftly and in flashes, of her screaming at Dean and blaming both him and Sam for keeping their secret from her, of her running away from them like a toddler throwing a tantrum, of headlights flashing brightly in her front window as she careened off the side of the road.

Now, she didn't care about any of it. She didn't care about her pride or the statement she'd been trying to make by running away. Now, she just wanted her family.

She tried to lift her arm to find some way to get up, but that sent a lightning bolt of pain through her body and she couldn't help but groan out loud. Dean didn't move from his chair, but she saw Sam stir on the floor, lifting his head up groggily to see what the matter was. But when he made eye contact with Sophie, and realized that she was awake, he sat up immediately, like he'd been electrocuted. "Sophie," he breathed.

He quickly got to his feet, and was about to hit Dean on the chest to wake him up when Sophie choked out, "Don't."

Sam stopped himself, looking at her in confusion. "Why?"

"He's tired," she said softly, so softly she wasn't even sure he could hear her. "And I…I don't know what to say to him."

Sam quietly walked over to her bed, looking at her up and down, his eyes lingering on the places covered with bandages and bruises. She looked up at him, too, with his messy brown hair and worried hazel eyes. "I'm really glad you're okay, Soph," he finally said. "We came as soon as we heard."

"I'm glad I'm okay, too," she said. "I don't know how, though. I thought…I was sure that I was dead…."

Sam gave a small grin. "Yeah, well, you'll have to thank your guardian angel for that."

"Remy?" Sophie asked, looking around the room. "Where is he?"

Sam shook his head. "Probably roaming around nearby. He's pretty drained from trying to keep you alive until the doctor's could operate on you. You…you were in pretty bad shape, Soph."

She nodded with as little movement as she could, and then tears stung her eyes. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I just—"

"Stop," he told her, holding up a hand. She closed her mouth, and then his hand wrapped around hers softly, so as not to hurt any other part of her. "If you ask me, you were well within your right to want a little space from us," Sam said, looking at her with a serious expression in his eyes. "Granted, North Carolina is a hell of a lot of space," he added.

"How do you—"

"Eremiel told us," Sam said. He stared at her for another moment. "Sophie, if you wanted to visit your mom, all you had to do was ask."

"I know," she replied quietly, blinking back her tears. "I didn't really plan it ahead of time, but…I don't know, I'm glad I did it alone. I think I needed it."

"I get it," Sam said with a wistful grin. "I really do. When Dean and I lost our dad… well, we had our ways of coping, our ways of remembering. Love and grief make you do things that don't really make sense."

Sophie blinked. "You two never talk about your dad all that much," she said softly.

Sam nodded thoughtfully. "Our relationship was complicated. But we loved each other. It's hard to talk about."

"I get that, too," she whispered. Then her tears came back into her eyes. "I really am sorry, Sam," she choked out.

He held her hand a little tighter. "It's okay," he replied, his face tight. "I'm just glad you're alive."

She nodded, and then she moved to sit up a bit and then gasped at the pain such a simple motion brought her. "Holy crap," she said through gritted teeth, squeezing her eyes closed as she tried to ride out the waves of pain.

Sam's eyes narrowed a bit. "I'm going to call a nurse, see if you can get some more pain medication now that you're awake."

"It's not that bad," she said reflexively.

Sam rolled his eyes. "You were just flipped off the side of the highway, Soph. Let us drug you up."

She just sat back against her pillows. "If you insist," she sighed.

After giving her hand a quick squeeze, he let go and made his way out of the room, looking for an open nurse. She turned her head, looking back at Dean, who was still asleep, even though by the expression on his face it wasn't a very peaceful sleep. She sighed, leaning back against her pillows and glancing around the room. To her surprise, she saw her phone on the table next to her. The front screen was smashed to smithereens, but it was lighting up and buzzing, and she could see from the corner of her eye that it was Jack.

She swallowed painfully. He'd probably called her about a million times. And she owed it to him to try and explain. Or at the very least let him know she was alive.

She gritted her teeth and tried to extend her arm to grab her phone, not wanting to emit any sort of noise for fear of waking her dad up. She stretched her fingers out, edging herself close to the side of the bed, and just as her fingers brushed her phone the strength in the arm supporting her as she leaned slightly out of the bed gave out, and she fell forward. She tumbled out of the bed and let out an agonized wail as the IV was ripped out of her arm and she hit the floor of the hospital room, taking her sheets with her, curling up into a ball to try and minimize her pain.

From her spot on the ground, she saw Dean jump up like he'd just heard gunfire. His head whipped from side to side, trying to find the source of the noise, until his eyes finally locked in on Sophie, huddled on the ground in pain. He quickly launched himself out of his chair and knelt down on the floor next to her. "Sophie?"

"I…I was trying to get my phone," she panted.

He let out a breath, clearly glad to see that she was, for the most part, okay. Gently, he wrapped his arms around her. "If I lift you up like this, will it hurt you?"

"No," she lied.

He nodded, and as tenderly as he could, he lifted her up off the ground. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out, and soon enough he placed her back in her bed. She stayed in the exact position he'd set her down in, with her bad leg lying straight down and her good one bent up, her back resting against a throne of pillows. Her pain was so intense that she didn't realize she'd been holding her breath, and so after a second, she shakily let it out.

Dean sat down on the edge of the bed and looked down at her with heavy eyes. She saw him staring at everything—the cast on her leg, the bandages around her head, the bruises and cuts and scrapes, the little bulge on her ribcage under her hospital gown where she had a bunch of gauze and medical tape—and she saw the raw regret in his eyes, the self-loathing. "Sophie, sweetheart, I'm so sorry."

The part of her that wanted to ease his pain screamed at her to tell him that it was okay. That she forgave him. That in her heart she knew he had been trying to do the right thing and she understood that. She wanted to have the Hospital Reunion Scene that was in every great movie and book where both parties decide to let bygones be bygones and forgive and forget.

Except she didn't want to lie to him. It wasn't okay, after all. Nothing was okay. Even if she'd just barely survived a car accident, he was still going to be ripped out of her life in six months. The problem was still at hand.

But now when she thought about it, she wasn't mad. She no longer wanted to run away and hide and do reckless things in the name of anger. She was just sad. Just really, really sad. And even though she couldn't forgive him, not just yet, she didn't want to leave him again either.

"I'm glad you came all the way here for me," she finally said, not knowing what else to say, and then the tears she'd been trying to subdue while talking to Sam started to fall from her eyes.

Dean just shook his head, the smallest of grins on his face. He gently cupped the least injured side of her face with his hand, and Sophie was momentarily shocked at how such rough, calloused hands could be so gentle and careful. He gently wiped away a few of her tears with his thumb, staring at them with dark eyes, with that look that meant he thought it was all his fault. And then he leaned _down,_ smoothing back her hair and pressing his lips softly to her forehead, and she closed her eyes, forgetting her pain for just a moment. "Soph, it'd take a hell of a lot more than distance to keep me from coming for you," he said when he sat back up, his green eyes holding her gaze.

Before she could say anything else, Sam was coming back in, the blonde nurse from earlier trailing behind him. "I found Jen," Sam said, walking in with a proud grin. "What are the chances of— Sophie, what the hell happened?"

Sophie looked down and realized she definitely looked about ten times more awful than when Sam had left her. All of her blankets were tangled around her, a tiny stream of blood ran down her arm from where the IV had been ripped out of her skin, and she had that freshly cried look on her face. She sniffed and looked over at Dean. "I kind of fell out of my bed."

"Oh, sweetie," Jen immediately started, before Sam could say anything else. "Let me help you out." The pretty blonde immediately set to work on Sophie, cleaning up her arm and readjusting the IV. She fixed the sheets and made sure Sophie was as comfortable as possible, chatting idly as she checked her vitals. "Your dad made me almost lose my job, he was so worried about you," Jen told Sophie as she checked her blood pressure, her brown eyes warm with kindness.

"It's part of his charm," she replied gruffly.

Jen laughed appreciatively. "Yeah, well, that charm of his also scared the hell out of Gary, the receptionist. He's been talking to anyone who will listen about the crazy asshole who threatened him with physical violence."

Sophie couldn't help but smirk. "My dad would _never _threaten anyone with physical violence. He's a regular pacifist," she deadpanned.

She saw Sam and Dean grin out of the corner of her eye, and Jen gave another laugh. "For someone who just went through a pretty terrible car accident and a couple hours of surgery, you're pretty put together." She handed Sophie a small cup of water, which she started drinking from immediately. She hadn't been aware of how thirsty she was. "Your survival was a miracle, honestly. Cases like these make me believe in guardian angels."

Sophie almost choked on her water. She coughed a few times until her throat was clear, and then slowly she set the empty water cup on the tray that Jen had put close to her bed.

Jen gave her a warm smile. "Well, now that I've checked you all out and you seem to be doing pretty well, all things considered… Your uncle said that you were in a lot of pain, which I could imagine."

Sophie lightly shrugged.

"Honey," Jen said kindly, "this is the one time in your life that I'm going to ask you to not be brave, and to just tell me on a scale from one to ten, how much pain are you in?"

Sophie bit her lip, looking down into her lap. Despite all that she'd been through with them, she still hated showing any weakness in front of Sam and Dean. "I don't know," she mumbled. "Maybe an eight."

Jen nodded. "Okay. Well I'm going to give you some pain medication, alright? It might make you a bit sleepy, but really, you could use a bit of sleep after everything you've gone through tonight. Is that alright with you?"

Sophie nodded. "Honestly, I want to be so drugged up that I don't remember this entire night even happened."

Jen grinned and then looked back at Sam and Dean. "The fact that she's joking like this is a good sign."

"I'm not joking," Sophie grumbled. "Seriously, if there's something you can shoot me up with to forget all this ever happened while simultaneously making everything not hurt anymore, I will personally tell your boss that you should get a raise."

Jen laughed. "Unfortunately, honey, all we can give you now is some morphine." She injected something into the bag of fluid being filtered into Sophie's body intravenously, and then Jen grinned. "Alright. This should take effect pretty soon. I've got to go see some other patients now, but I'll be back to check on you in a bit."

"Thank you," Sophie said quietly, watching the contents of the bag slowly drip down into the tube that would feed it into her body.

"Of course, sweetie," Jen replied kindly. "I hope you feel better." Then the nurse glanced back at Sam and Dean. "I'm sure I'll see you two around." And then with a quick smile back at Sophie, she was gone.

Sophie sighed, leaning back against her pillows. "I like her. She's nice."

"Yeah," Sam said, crossing his arms. "Soph, how'd you fall out of the bed."

She sighed. "I was trying to reach my phone. Jack's called me like a million times and he probably thinks I'm dead, which, you know, isn't that far off—"

"You can call him tomorrow," Sam interrupted. "He'll survive a few more hours without talking to you. You need to rest."

Sophie groaned. "Fine."

"Yeah, and no more hospital bed acrobatics trying to reach something," Dean said pulling the chair he was sleeping in so that it was right next to Sophie's bed. "From now on, you need something, you ask, and one of us will get it."

"Ooh, the princess treatment," Sophie mused with a grin. "I could get used to this."

Dean grinned and shook his head. "Don't get used to it, kiddo. I expect you out of that bed and up and at 'em in no time. That's an order."

She nodded, feeling the pain medication beginning to kick in. She yawned widely, nestling back in against the pillows. "You're making pancakes again when we get home," she said tiredly. "I really want pancakes. _That's _an order."

Dean chuckled. "Sure thing, Soph. All the pancakes you want. I might even throw in some bacon if you're lucky. You just have to get better first."

She nodded, closing her eyes. Everything in her brain was starting to go swirly. "I'm not forgiving you yet," she said sleepily, not even knowing where the words spilling out of her mouth were coming from. "I mean, I really want to, but I can't. Does that make sense?"

Dean looked down at her with heavy eyes. "Yeah, kiddo. I don't really blame you."

The exhaustion was leaking into her bones, making her feel physically heavy with fatigue. She blinked a few times, the outlines of her dad and uncle blurring out. "Would this be a bad time to tell you that Remy told me he'd teach me to drive his motorcycle?" she asked, her words slightly slurred together.

Sam and Dean reacted at the same time, both in outrage. "_What_?"

But she was already asleep.

* * *

The hospital was so bright. Sophie wasn't quite sure when she'd woken up, but all she knew was now she was there, and for some reason the hospital seemed much brighter than it had before. She sat up in her bed, looking around and seeing that both Sam and Dean were nowhere to be seen. "Dad?" she called out in a quiet voice, still not able to make all that much noise. "Sam?"

There was no response, and so she tested her ability to move her body. Remy must've still been working his magic on her, because it was a little easier to move herself now. She moved around, trying to find a way to maneuver herself out of the bed, when a knock could be heard at her door.

She turned towards the sound and saw a man maybe in his early fifties at the door wearing scrubs and carrying a clipboard in his hands. "Hi, Sophie. I'm Dr. Taylor. I'm overseeing your progress and recovery here."

She nodded, forgoing her attempt to climb out of the bed for now. "Hi."

"We just need to check and see how everything's coming along," he said, walking up to her and looking at the machines that were monitoring her. "Everything seems to be good here."

Then he swiftly turned off all of the monitors and began to unhook the bag that contained all of her medicine and nutrients and disconnect it from the tube that fed it into her body. "Um, doc, what are you doing?" she asked uncertainly.

Dr. Taylor turned around. "Getting the job done," he said matter-of-factly, and then he grinned at her as his eyes flashed black. Her eyes widened, and she immediately began to try to scramble out of her bed, but everything was still in pain and she couldn't quite make it in time before the doctor grabbed her hands and shoved her back down harshly. "Pleasure seeing you again," he said. "Although I can't believe you used all that information I gave you just to go run yourself off the road. It's just pathetic, really."

Sophie's eyes widened. "Taylor?" she breathed. The doctor just smiled. "But... you're locked up in the bunker! There's no way you could have gotten out!"

"And yet here I am," the demon replied. "And I'd love to exchange pleasantries, hon, but I've learned my lesson with you Winchesters. One tiny monologue and it's off with my head. So—"

Taylor quickly grabbed one of the pillows from behind Sophie and smashed it into her face. Sophie screamed, but her cries were caught by the pillow, and Taylor held the pillow over Sophie's nose and mouth as she thrashed, her oxygen utterly cut off. She could feel herself growing lightheaded, and she was wondering where the hell Sam and Dean were, when suddenly there was a flash of white light and a familiar, deep, calm voice rang out in the room.

"Wake up, Sophie."

She froze. Wake up? She _was_ awake. She was in the middle of being killed.

"Wake. Up."

And then suddenly she was sitting up in her bed, gasping and looking around for Taylor. The demon was nowhere to be found.

And standing right in front of her, with exhausted bags under his eyes and unkempt hair, was Remy.

She stared at him, breathing heavily. "That was just a dream?" she asked.

He nodded silently.

"That was so real," she squeezed out, trying to calm herself down. "Holy crap."

He just stared at her. "How do you feel?" he asked her after a moment.

She raised an eyebrow. "Don't you already know? Isn't that part of your guardian angel powers?"

Remy shrugged, a touch of amusement lighting up his eyes. "It's just the polite thing to ask."

She gave him a tiny grin. "Well, in that case, I feel like hell. But probably a lot better than I should be feeling after getting ran off the road, thanks to you."

He nodded. "You really took it out of me, Ace," he said. "Most of my grace is used up in the connection I make with you during the binding ritual. I practically had to siphon out all of my reserves to keep that reckless heart of yours beating."

She wanted to argue with him and point out that she hadn't been trying to get herself killed. After all, it had been a car _accident_. It could have happened to anyone. But she just nodded. "Well, thanks. I…I'm glad you saved me."

He smirked. "Yeah, well, I'm still holding out judgment to see if you were worth it."

"Jerk," she snapped, but she couldn't put her heart into it, and a small grin crept through. She looked down at her body, trying to move various limbs and gauging how quickly she was recovering. "Your mojo seems to be doing the trick. How long do I have to stay here for?" she asked. "This place sucks."

"Well, the doctors recommend a week, from what I heard," Remy replied as he turned away from her, making his way to the other side of the room and trying to fix his disheveled golden locks in the tiny mirror above the sink. "But because of yours truly, I'd say you can expect to be out later today. Besides, we don't need you to be fully healed to leave. Once someone gets Cas to come down here, he can fix you right up."

She nodded, glancing around the room again. "Where's my dad and Sam?"

"Sam's probably talking to that nurse that's been helping you out, Jen. They seem to be getting along pretty well. And last time I checked, Dean's been trying to hunt down the best doctor in this building. He's being really obnoxious about it. too."

"Yeah, well, he never half-asses anything, that's for sure," she said with a grin.

"Yeah," Remy replied, and then he returned to her bedside, his eyes searching her. "Sophie… I know I'm supposed to tell you now that you were being stupid and irresponsible, going off on that ridiculous road trip. And honestly, I'm probably going to get an earful when I go back to Heaven about how I should've just made you turn the car around and go back home. But…." He let out a deep breath. "I think that, despite all of this… That was something you needed to do."

His words shocked her. Had he been some kid, it might not have surprised her so much, but he was an angel. Angels didn't think about anything other than the objective; they did whatever it took to fulfill their heavenly duty. But here Remy was, telling her that he had gone against the judgment of Heaven to let her try and make peace with herself.

And that's when she began to really, truly see that Remy wasn't just like any other angel. Maybe—just maybe—they could be friends.

"I definitely wish that the wreck never happened," Sophie said, gesturing towards her battered body. "And I wish this whole thing with my Dad…I wish it was all different. But I'm glad that I went. And…I'm glad you came with me. You were weirdly kind of fun to have as a travel buddy. Except for when you controlled the radio."

Remy smirked. "Mark my words, Ace, you will eventually develop an appreciation for country. I will make sure of it."

"Hey, do you think you could re-break my leg? That'll probably be less painful than what you just proposed."

He looked ready to retaliate, but at that moment, Dean walked back in, carrying a Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hands. He looked absolutely exhausted, which Sophie was beginning to see was a trend. Everyone around her looked like they hadn't slept in days. She immediately felt guilty, because she knew it was because of her.

Dean took one look at Remy and raised an eyebrow. "You look like hell, man. I think you could really use a shower. Or a shot of tequila. Probably both."

"You're not exactly the picture of beauty either," Remy shot back. "You've been wearing that shirt for three days. And I'm more of a moonshine kind of guy, myself."

"Who isn't?" Dean conceded.

"You both look awful," Sophie cut in. "I look better than both of you right now, and I literally was just pried out of my car by the jaws of life." Suddenly, a horrified look crept on her face. "Oh no!" she groaned. "My poor car!"

"Really?" Dean asked in disbelief. "You're in the hospital after almost dying and you're going to worry about the car?"

"Listen to yourself speak," Sophie replied with a roll of her eyes. "That was possibly the most hypocritical sentence I have ever heard leave a human being's mouth. If that was the Impala all crunched up on the side of the road, you'd be calling in a squad of Navy SEALs to rescue it."

Dean took a long gulp from his coffee. "Yeah, well, it's not Baby. It's that piece of crap hunk of metal we gave you from the garage at the bunker. Don't worry, we can just hotwire you a new car. You can even have your pick."

The look she gave to Dean was one of utter mortification. "I am _not _stealing a car!"

"You're not," Dean agreed. "I am."

"Nope. Not happening."

Dean shrugged. "Why not? We could upgrade you. Get you something you non-cultured teens seem to enjoy, like a Civic or a Corolla, or hell, we could even try to find some kind of convertible if that's what you're into—"

"Jesus, Dad, no!" Sophie exclaimed. "I'll just… I don't know, get a job, save up for my own car."

"Ew, no, why would you willingly sign up for more responsibility?" Dean asked distastefully. "As if you don't have enough crap going on in your life."

"Well I sure as hell am not going to let you steal a car for me," Sophie responded.

Remy cut in. "Maybe we should just get you a motorcycle," he suggested with a grin.

"No!" Sophie and Dean both exclaimed.

"Alright, alright, jeez," Remy grumbled. "It was just a suggestion."

Sophie just sighed. "You know, I'm not as upset about the car as I am what was inside the car," she said. "My bag with all of my crap, my favorite CDs, my favorite sunglasses, and… that box of pictures I got from that storage unit. And Lion."

"Box of pictures? And a jungle cat?" Dean repeated.

"My mom left me the key to this little storage unit in Asheville after she died," Sophie explained. "It had all of the stuff she kept from when I was growing up in it. Talk about a walk down memory lane. But I kind of swiped a box of pictures from the place, and my old stuffed cat from when I was little, and they were in my car, and now…." She just shook her head. "Now they're gone, I guess." She looked sad for a moment, then she just shrugged. "Guess I just wasn't meant to let my past life cross over with the new one."

Dean gave her a small smile. "Hey, you're alive, and you honestly shouldn't be. Let's call this a win, okay?"

She nodded, even though she was still a little bit down. "Okay."

At that moment, Sam walked in, grinning when he saw Sophie was awake and not in any significant amount of pain. "Hey, look who's awake," he said brightly.

Dean gave him a strange look. "Someone's awfully chipper," he noted.

Sam looked offended. "Well it couldn't be because my favorite niece is alive and well after getting smashed by a semi."

Dean just shrugged, but Remy gave a sly grin. "It also couldn't be because you just scored that blonde nurse's number," he said.

Sam's mouth hung open, and Sophie grinned as she saw he'd been caught. Dean looked at his brother in disbelief. "Dude, are you serious? I'm the wounded, hurting father who just almost lost his daughter, and _you _manage to swoop in and take the hot nurse? Not cool, man."

"Hey, she's pretty and nice, and—"

"Are _you_ serious?" Sophie cut in. "I literally almost died and I'm confined to this dumb hospital bed, and you two are already using me to try and get laid?"

"Hey, you know what," Dean cut in, "you are a sixteen-year-old girl and you've gotten more action than Sam and I combined in the time you've been with us."

Sophie blushed. "All I've done is kiss Jack," she grumbled.

"Exactly. That's the sad part," Dean said. "So just sit back and let us argue like mature adults over who gets the girl."

"Uh huh. Mature adults," Sophie said, rolling her eyes.

"We're not going to argue," Sam said. "I'm the one that got the number, so that's it. Game over. Besides, Dean, she's twenty-five. A little young for you, don't you think?"

"Are you kidding me?" Dean exclaimed. "Look, if they're legal, they're not too young."

"Have I ever told you that you're disgusting?" Sophie shot at him.

"Only when you don't mean it," Dean replied with a quick wink.

"Okay, new rule," Sophie proclaimed. "If she's young enough to be my sister, she's too young for you. I think that's fair."

"You wouldn't have a twenty-five-year-old sister," Dean rebuked.

"I will be seventeen in six months," Sophie continued. "Which means that she's about eight years older than me. Which is definitely a sibling-sized age gap."

"She's right," Sam chimed in, looking self-satisfied.

"Shut up," Dean snapped, looking annoyed. "It's not my fault that I get older, why do all my women have to get older too?"

"All your women?" Sophie repeated, eyes narrowed. "Jesus, you're a pig."

"I don't think Jesus would appreciate that," Remy quickly cut in. Sophie just scowled.

At that moment, Jen walked in, and Sophie couldn't help but notice that it looked like she'd put on a little more makeup and changed her hair from a sloppy bun to a carefully-arranged messy ponytail. And she certainly didn't miss the way the nurse was glancing up at Sam. But when she walked in and saw the whole room was very, very quiet, she crossed her arms. "What is it?" she asked.

There was another three seconds of quiet, and then Sophie burst out laughing, Sam, Dean, and Remy not far behind her.

**Hey wonderful people! If there are any formatting/spelling/grammar errors for this chapter, it's because I had to edit it on my phone, so it might not be perfect quality! For all you Americans such as myself out there, Happy Fourth of July! I'll just be here, babysitting an 11-month-old baby and writing some more! See ya Wednesday! ~ Lacey :)**


	59. Chapter 59: Invisible Strings

_Chapter 59: Invisible Strings_

With the help of Remy's grace and Dean's power of persuasion, Sophie was discharged from the hospital early the next morning and they were on their way back home to the bunker. Remy had disappeared in order to try and find out what was taking Cas so long, and so the ride home was just Sophie in the backseat and Sam and Dean up front.

Sophie was still in a lot of pain. Her left leg was secured in a large cast, and she'd fought long and hard with both Dean and the doctor about getting crutches instead of a wheelchair. She also was having awful headaches and some pretty bad nausea that came with the traumatic brain injury, and she had to be very careful not to be too active because of her partial splenectomy. But she wasn't too worried about it. All she had to do was keep herself together until they could locate Cas and have him zap her back to full health.

Until then, though, it was a struggle of painkillers and being unable to move properly. Sam and Dean tried to help her where they could, but for the most part, she just needed to tough it out.

As they crossed the Kansas state line, Sophie played with her phone. She now had about twenty missed calls from Jack and God only knew how many missed texts, and at this point, she had no idea what to say to him. She had sent him a quick text when she got out of the hospital that said _I'm alive and well. Family business matter. Tell you more in a couple days_. She figured that would buy her a little time to figure out what to tell him, but it was just a band-aid over a bullet hole.

Sam looked back at her as she looked at her phone. "Still haven't talked to Jack?" he asked.

She frowned. Her uncle was way too good at reading her mind. "No," she sighed. "What am I supposed to say? Hey, sorry, I ran off to North Carolina with my guardian angel that you don't know I have and then almost died in a car accident on the way back. On top of that let me tell you about the terrifying demon determined to take over the world and burn humanity to the ground."

"Well, that _is_ the truth," Dean pointed out.

"Yeah, well, that's not gonna happen. Once Cas poofs me back to normal it'll be fine and I'll...I'll figure something out."

Sophie could see Sam's frown from the backseat. "You know, Soph, sooner or later those lies are going to come back and bite you. Just look at Dean and how you reacted when you found out about that."

"Thanks for bringing that up, dude, you're a real pal," Dean muttered.

"Look, I'm not an idiot, I know that if he finds out it'll be bad," Sophie said with an tinge of sadness. "I just…you know, Jack's the only normal I've got. And it's not just that, you know, he's not just some symbol of an ordinary life to me, he's…."

"He's important to you," Sam sighed. "Hey, I get that. I do. But just be careful, Soph."

"I will," she said, nodding. At that moment, they flew over a speed bump, jostling her head and causing her to gasp. "Ow! Dad, what the hell!"

"Sorry," he apologized swiftly. "I'm just trying to get back quickly."

"Yeah, well maybe you should prioritize getting back alive over getting back quickly," she snapped.

"I said I was sorry."

She groaned, sitting back and then closing her eyes. Her head was killing her. "Seriously, where is Cas? I feel like dynamite is perpetually going off in my brain."

"Remy will let us know when he finds him," Dean said assuredly. But he was a little concerned, too. Cas hadn't gone this long without responding to a call or a prayer in a very long time, especially where Sophie was concerned. Cas had developed quite a strong bond with Sophie, and to think he'd just leave her hanging in her hour of need was strange.

"Do you think he's okay?" she asked.

Sam and Dean were quiet for a moment, and that gave her the answer she hadn't wanted. Dean tried to recover. "I'm sure he's fine, Soph. You know Cas, it'd take a whole hell of a lot to take him down."

She knew that was the truth, but she was still unsure. "Yeah," she finally said. "I guess."

They arrived at the bunker a few hours later. When the Impala was parked, Sophie quickly opened the door and tried to slide out, but Sam immediately stopped her. "Soph, just let me help you," he said, quickly getting out of the passenger seat and coming over to her door.

"No, Sam, I've got this," she said in frustration. She scooted over to the edge and then tried to pull herself out of the car, but her arm gave out and she would have toppled over if Sam hadn't caught her.

"For starters," he said, "you need your crutches."

Sophie grumbled unintelligibly as Dean retrieved her crutches from the trunk of the car and walked over to where Sam stood, handing the crutches to Sophie and watching her slowly inch her way out of the car. By the time she was removed, she was breathing heavily, like she'd just run five miles. "Why is this so hard?" she exclaimed in annoyance.

"Just take it easy, kiddo," Dean said, eyeing her closely. "No point hurting yourself even worse. We just need to get you into the bunker safely so that we can put you in a padded cell where you can't get hurt anymore until Cas fixes you."

"There are no padded cells in the bunker," Sophie snapped, frustrated at herself and at the Impala and at Sam and Dean and at everything.

"That's what you think," Dean said with a grin.

Sophie was still grumbling in annoyance as they made their way into the bunker. Dean was talking about how she'd need to stay home from school until she was healed and Sam was trying to think of a good way for her to get her homework. Sam and Dean started walking down the stairs as they talked, but Sophie just looked down, swallowing nervously. Shakily, she tried to lower herself onto the first step down with her crutches, but she swayed uncontrollably and had to drop one of her crutches so that she could clutch onto the railing to keep herself from tumbling down the stairs.

At the sound of her crutch clattering on the staircase, both Sam and Dean turned to see Sophie holding onto the railing for dear life. "Dammit," Sam said, reacting first and making his way back up the staircase. He grabbed her crutches and tossed them to Dean, who barely managed to catch them. "I'm just going to carry you," he stated plainly, giving her a quick nod, and before Sophie could protest she was swooped up into his arms, bridal style.

"No, Sam, c'mon. This is so embarrassing!" she cried, hiding her face in her hands.

"Hold on, Sammy, let me get a picture of this," Dean said with a grin on his face, pulling out his phone. "I can add this to the damsel-in-distress photo collage I'm making for you, Soph," he added jokingly.

"You're such a jerk!" Sophie exclaimed, but she couldn't help but grin as she felt the rumble of laughter shaking Sam's chest. As he started walking, she looked at the ground and gulped. "Sam, I dont know if anyone's told you this, but you're scarily tall."

Sam's rumble of laughter intensified. "So I've been told."

Sophie groaned loudly. "I think I'm getting vertigo."

"I never pegged you as a drama queen, Soph," Sam laughed, and she continued to argue with him until they finally hit the floor of the main room in the bunker and he gently set her down on her feet. Dean handed her the crutches with a grin and a wink.

She made a show of dusting herself off. "You know, I could've achieved that on my own."

"Yeah, in twenty years," Dean remarked as he dropped his bag on the ground next to the big table, which was still piled high with all of the research he and Sam had been doing on the two rituals they'd discovered.

Sophie noticed all of the books and papers, and slowly she crutched her way over to the table. "What's all this?" she asked.

"Research," Sam said after a moment's hesitant silence. "We've been making some headway on the whole Beelzebub situation."

Sophie raised her eyebrows. "Really?"

"Sort of," Sam explained. "There are these rituals we found, and—"

"Do we really need to worry her about this, Sam?" Dean cut in sharply, his head buried in his duffle bag as he searched for his phone charger.

Sophie felt a tiny piece of her old anger resurface. "Um, yeah, Dad, you should. You don't get to leave me out of this anymore. I'm in this now whether you like it or not."

"Well, I don't like it," Dean said matter-of-factly, rising back to his feet with his charger in his hand, giving Sophie a stern look. "Look, I get that it was stupid to keep you in the dark for so long, but I still don't want you getting involved in this. Beelzebub is dangerous. And he knows about you. And if you're snooping around and you slip up and somehow he finds you…."

Before he could finish talking, Sophie was already shaking her head. "I'm not asking for you to throw me on the front line and have me charge at the demon like some crazy kamikaze pilot. I just want to know what's going on. I'm pretty handy with research and who knows, maybe a fresh pair of eyes will do you two some good."

Sam looked over at Dean. "She's got a point."

Dean looked annoyed. "I know she does. That's what happens when your kid is smarter than you," he said in irritation. Then he looked back at Sophie. "You can help with research, and we'll keep you filled in as best we can," he said. "But not until you're all healed up. Deal?"

"Deal," Sophie agreed. "Now, I was promised pancakes."

Dean looked at her in surprised. "How do you even remember that? You were totally doped up when you asked for that."

She shrugged. "That's the last thing I remember before blacking out." Then she frowned. "Wait, did I say anything else?"

"You told me that Remy promised to teach you how to drive his motorcycle," Dean said, his voice low and gruff, his eyes glaring. "And I mean, I'm still relatively new to this whole parenting thing, but I'm pretty sure that when older boys come around your daughter offering to let her ride their motorcycle, that is an immediate red flag."

"I can't believe I told you that," Sophie sighed, eyes downcast. "I was really looking forward to that, too."

"Yeah, well, I will be dismantling that damn thing with a Louisville Slugger, so don't."

Sophie rolled her eyes. "Whatever, Carrie Underwood. So can we still have pancakes?"

"As you wish, your highness."

Sophie was about to snap something snarky at him when suddenly she heard a rush of wings, and then out of the blue Cas was a mere foot in front of her, causing her to squeak in shock and trip over her own cast-covered leg and hit the ground with a painful thud.

Immediately, like they were attached to her by invisible strings, Dean and Sam rushed to Sophie. This time Sam gathered her crutches and Dean helped her back up to her feet. She was starting to get fed up with how helpless the car accident had rendered her. "You okay?" Dean asked her in a low voice, a little distractedly. When she nodded, he turned to look at the angel. "Cas, where the hell have you been?"

Cas wore a grave look on his face. "Heaven has been in an uproar," he said darkly. "The angels have gotten wind of Beelzebub's plot to open Lucifer's Cage once again and take control of the world, and…there is a division among the ranks as to how we should deal with the issue. It's been absolute chaos."

Dean made an annoyed sound. "Of course. This whole mess is already crappy enough, so why not add a bunch of pissed off bipolar angel dicks to the mix? What could possibly go wrong?"

"Dean, listen to me," Cas said sternly. "They're keeping close tabs on me. The only reason I slipped away was because Eremiel managed to find me and cover for me. He said Sophie had been injured."

Sophie raised a hand. "Yep, that would be me."

Cas turned to her, and his hard gaze turned slightly softer. "I am sorry I was not there for you earlier, little lion," he said sincerely. "I disconnected myself from my—what is it that you three always call it—my angel radio, so that I could focus on the problems in Heaven. If I had known—"

"It's okay, Cas," Sophie said, waving away his apology. "It all worked out fine in the end."

Cas took a step towards her and pressed two fingers gently to her forehead. In just a moment, she felt the pain evaporate from her body. She looked down and saw that her cast had disappeared, along with her bandages and cuts and bruises. If she could see inside of herself, she was certain she'd find that her spleen was fully intact. "Thank you, Cas," she breathed in pure relief.

He nodded, but his eyes were still dark. "You cannot rely on my healing powers anymore, Sophie," he told her. "This conflict in Heaven is serious. There is a chance I might be cut off from Heaven's powers soon, which will leave me unable to heal like before. So be careful and cautious, and rely on Eremiel to help you. He may not have the healing powers that I have, but he has the power to prevent you from ever needing them. So listen to him."

Cas had never asked her or told her to do anything, so hearing this from him made Sophie begin to see how serious this all was. Without argument, she just nodded. "Of course."

He turned to Sam and Dean. "This whole disaster…it's only going to go from bad to worse. So if you two have any cards to play or favors to call in, it might be time to do that."

Sam and Dean nodded. The younger Winchester stepped forward. "Before you leave, Cas, we need to ask you something about the Ritual of Stars."

Cas looked confused. "I've never heard of it."

"Well, to make a long story short, if Beelzebub manages to pull it off he gets to bust Lucifer out," Sam said darkly. "We've got a list of what he needs to do it, and we thought you could help us with one of the components. The wings of Heaven's most cherished."

Cas' eyebrows furrowed together in confusion. "I will do some digging and get back to you on that," he said, and then he closed his eyes. "I'm needed back in Heaven now. I hope I see you around soon."

And then he was gone.

The three Winchesters just stood there, silently. Dean was the first to speak. "Well, that wasn't cryptic at all."

Sophie gently shook the leg that had been broken just a minute before. "It was nice of him to drop in, I guess."

Dean looked over at her. "How're you feeling?"

"For the first time in two days, _not _like I was hit by a truck," she said with a tiny grin. "But now I'm super tired."

"Yeah, sometimes that happens," Sam said. He walked up to his niece and gently inspected her head. "You look all healed. Any chest or side pain?"

Sophie shook her head. "Nope."

"Guess he fixed everything then," Sam said, sounding relieved.

"Yep," Sophie sighed. She looked up at her uncle. "Does this mean I can go back to school tomorrow?"

He cracked a grin. "Yeah, if you want."

Dean groaned. "For once can you do something that makes me proud and try to skip school or miss class or not do your homework or something?"

Sophie rolled her eyes. "Sorry I'm such a disappointment." She walked past Dean, jumping up so that she could try to ruffle his hair affectionately like he usually did to her, but she was too short and she missed, her hand just grazing his ear. "Why am I so short?" she muttered.

"It's all that coffee," Dean remarked, trapping her under his arm and using his other hand to ruffle her hair as she groaned loudly in defeat. "But that's okay, I kind of like you as the perpetual pipsqueak."

"Yeah, well I'm the perpetual pipsqueak you promised pancakes to," Sophie reminded him, squirming her way out of his arms and making her way to her room. "So get cooking!"

She practically skipped down the hall to the room, reveling in the fact that she actually _could _skip, and when she made it to her door she flung it open, suddenly feeling a huge sense of happiness at being back home.

Home. It was pretty awesome that she had somewhere to call home now.

She walked into her room, picking up the mess she'd left in the wake of the packing storm she'd created after her fight with Dean. Five minutes into putting her strewn clothes back in her closet and tidying up her room, she saw something orange out of the corner of her eye and she frowned. She turned her head in the direction, and then her mouth dropped open.

Sitting on her bed, like they'd been there for ages, was her stuffed orange tabby kitty Lion on top of the unharmed box of photos from her mom's storage unit.

Mouth wide open, Sophie immediately walked over to the bed and stared at the little piece of her past sitting on top of her yellow comforter. "How…," she whispered, completely bewildered.

And then she saw the tiny slip of paper with that familiar lopsided handwriting, and she couldn't help but grin.

_It's not stupid to hold onto the past when it's this furry and adorable. Also I took the liberty of looking through your baby pictures, and I think it's great that you were such a chubby infant. _

_ Get well soon, Ace. _

_ –R_

**Good news—no cliff hanger this time! Woo! **

**Bad news—I will be on vacation for the next several days (which, in and of itself, is admittedly not bad news) and will have essentially no access to Internet. Which means my Saturday update is looking like it's not going to happen. There is the tiniest of chances I will have a little bit of access to WiFi, but I can't promise it, so I would just bank on the next update being next Wednesday.**

**Thank you as always for reading and for your encouraging reviews! The response to this story is half the reason I'm so inspired to keep writing it! Ya'll rock. ~ Lacey :)**


	60. Chapter 60: Sweet Emotion

_Chapter 60: Sweet Emotion_

When Dean woke up the next morning, he had to remind himself that the last couple of days had actually happened.

Sophie had found out the truth about his deal with Beelzebub. She'd run away. Sam had potentially found the answer to their whole crisis in these weird ancient Mesopotamian rituals. Sophie had almost gotten killed in a car accident. Remy had kept her from the brink of death. She hadn't forgiven him for lying to her.

But she was alive.

She was alive, and she didn't one hundred percent hate him, and today was a new damn day.

He got up, glancing at the clock by his bed. It was six thirty. Sophie would probably be up right about now, either on her run or showering to get ready for school. He chuckled to himself. The girl loved school more than was healthy. She was a bona fide nerd of the Sammy variety, and he loved that about her almost as much as he loved teasing her about it.

Slowly, he got up and rolled out of bed, throwing on a pair of jeans slung across the end of his bed and grabbing the first shirt he could lay his hands on and pulling it over his head. Then he shuffled out of his room and made his way down the hall and towards the kitchen, the only thing on his mind being a large, steamy mug of coffee.

But when he passed by the door to Sophie's room, he stopped. He could hear music coming from the room, and a familiar song floated into his ears from under her door.

But…no. There was no way.

Quietly, he opened the door and peeked into the room. And to his disbelief, there was Sophie, partially ready for school with her clothes on and her wet, freshly-showered hair thrown up in a towel, holding a hairbrush in her hand and jamming to the Aerosmith song that was playing out of her stereo.

He watched, trying very hard not to burst out laughing, as she danced around the room with her eyes closed as she undoubtedly imagined herself surrounded by a thousand screaming fans. "_You talk about the things that nobody cares_," she sang, slightly under her breath, jumping around to the guitar riff that played between lines. "_You're wearing out things that nobody wears_." She pretended to strum an air guitar with the confidence of a seasoned rocker, kicking her foot out dramatically. "_You're calling my name but I gotta make clear_." She whirled in a circle, spinning so fast the towel fell off her head and her damp strawberry blonde curls fell around her face. "_I can't say baby where I'll be in a year._"

She flipped her hair and turned around, bobbing her head to the beat of the music. Dean watched in unadulterated amusement as she spun, rocking out in total abandon. And then, without warning, her eyes opened for just a moment. And in that moment, she saw Dean.

Immediately, her green eyes widened as big as he'd ever seen them, and she shrieked.

He burst out laughing as she dropped the hairbrush and rushed to turn off the music, her face blushing deep red as he leaned on the doorframe and had to put a hand on his knee he was laughing so hard. "What the hell?" she yelled at him, picking up the towel from the floor and tossing it into the corner of the room. "How long have you been there?"

"Long enough," Dean managed to choke out in between laughing fits.

"Why didn't you knock?" she shot at him, her blush not fading in the slightest.

Dean tried to calm down his laughter. God, he hadn't laughed like this in far, far too long. He almost didn't remember how to do it. Once he got it under control, he managed to squeeze out, "I heard Aerosmith coming from your room, Soph. I thought it had to be another apocalypse."

"Uh huh. You barged into my room because you were concerned for my safety," she snapped sarcastically. "I could've been getting dressed!"

"But you weren't," Dean pointed out, still grinning ear to ear. "You were singing and dancing to _Aerosmith_."

Suddenly, Dean heard the sound of feet rushing down the hall, and then he saw Sam rounding a corner, shirtless and wearing sweatpants, his gun in his hand. "WhathappenedIheardscreamingIhaveagunIcankillit," he blurted out in a half-asleep voice, staring into the room wildly, his hair standing up on end.

"Sophie's willingly listening to my music, Sam, that's what's happening," Dean exclaimed, clapping his brother on the shoulder. "Aerosmith, man. She's in the big leagues now."

Sam just shook his head as he lowered his gun, annoyed that he'd gotten up in the first place. "I'm going back to sleep, I can't deal with this right now," he grumbled, glaring at the both of them, and then he ducked back out of the room. They heard him muttering down the hall as he left, something about how Dean needed a new hobby.

Sophie just let out a loud exasperated groan and glared at Dean. "Get out of my room!" she whined.

"Why, so you can put on some more of my music and rock out about as gracefully as a newborn giraffe?" Dean snorted.

"Go away, Dad!"

Instead, he took a step inside. "Seriously, where'd you even get that music? I know it's not on your iPod."

If possible, Sophie's blush deepened. "I…well, okay, after a summer of being forced to submit to your tyrannical power over the radio, I decided that not _all _of your music sucks. So I found some stashed in your room while you were out on one of your hunts and…I've kind of decided I like _some _of it." Her eyes fell downwards to the floor, as if she'd just been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

"I'm feeling like a real winner right now," Dean said, grinning.

Sophie physically put her hands on his chest and tried to shove him out of her room. "Get. Out. You're. Being. So. Annoying."

Unfortunately for Sophie, Dean was about ten times stronger than she was and was able to remove her from him in about five seconds before making his way over to her stereo. "No, really, I want to see what else you stole from me."

"Quit it, Dad, I'm serious!"

Dean saw the hidden stack of records behind the stereo and turned to her with a victorious grin. "Yahtzee."

"I'm going to kill you," she snapped, grabbing his arm and trying to yank him away. Again, though, she didn't really stand much of a chance when it came to Dean Winchester, even though she dug her heels in the ground to try and give herself a little more leverage, and he just brushed her off as he rifled through the records. "Why are you so freaking heavy?" she muttered.

Dean ignored her jab. "Foreigner, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Boston, Tom Petty, Queen… quite the collection you've got here," he noted with a perpetual smile glued on his face. "No Zeppelin or Black Sabbath, but we'll work you up to it."

Sophie looked deeply embarrassed, like he'd caught her doing something much worse than listening to rock music. "I don't like all of it," she said quickly. "Some of it's absolute crap. There's some seriously awful music in that pile."

"But you also like some of it," Dean said, a little look of pure victory on his face.

Sophie huffed in defeat. "Look, I'll admit that some of _your_ music isn't awful if you admit that some of _my_ music isn't awful."

Dean shook his head, chuckling. "Sorry, kiddo, your pop crap will always be pop crap. This music here transcends time."

Sophie glared at him. "Don't think I didn't hear you humming 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together' the other day while you were cleaning your gun."

For the first time since spying on Sophie, his smile fell. "That was one time," he argued, setting the music back down on her nightstand.

Now it was her turn to grin. "It's a slippery slope, my friend," she said. Then she glanced at the alarm clock by her bed and her eyes widened. "Seriously, get out of my room," she snapped. "Jack's picking me up for school in like ten minutes."

"He's picking you up?" Dean asked, confused. "Why?"

Sophie rolled her eyes as she forcibly turned Dean around, put her hands on his back, and used all of her strength to push him towards her door. "Because my poor little Volkswagen is rotting in some scrap yard and I don't have a car to drive anymore."

"Oh, right," Dean said, stopping just as Sophie almost had him out the door. He turned around and looked at her. "We're going to get you a new car, Soph. And don't worry, we won't steal it from someone who needs it, we'll make sure it's just hanging out in some car lot somewhere and not being used by anyone."

Sophie shook her head. "I don't want a car right now."

"C'mon, I just said we wouldn't steal—"

"It's not about stealing," she snapped. "It's about driving. And I don't want to drive right now."

Dean looked down at her, and he realized he'd been a complete idiot. Of course she didn't want a car right away. Of course she didn't want to drive. She'd just survived not her first but her second near-fatal car accident. And while physically, she was fine again, of course it was going to leave her hesitant to get behind the wheel again. "Right," he said slowly. "Well…okay. Jack can take you to school for a little while until we figure something out."

She nodded, looking relieved. "Thanks." Then she narrowed her eyes. "Now I'm serious, get out of my room, I need to get ready."

"You're really unkind in the mornings, you know that?" Dean grumbled, stepping out of the door.

"No, you're just an oversensitive, delicate little flower," she muttered.

"Oh, now you're just playing with my _sweet emotion_, Soph," he told her, grinning mischievously.

She let out another exasperated groan and unceremoniously shut the door in his face.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Jack pulled up outside of the bunker to take Sophie to school.

When she hopped into the passenger seat, slinging her backpack onto the floor by her feet, she immediately turned to Jack with a much-too-bright grin on her face. "Hey!" she said.

He turned to her, clearly not amused. "Don't do your whole cute face 'hey' thing," he said, point blank. "I want to know where the hell you were."

"I was in North Carolina," she said, crossing her arms and looking out the front window. "Happy? Now are we going to school or not?"

He heaved a big breath. He waited a moment to see if she'd say anything else, and when she didn't, he gave her a look. "I didn't mean to come off as, like, the creepy, stalker boyfriend who wants to know where you are at all times."

"I know," Sophie said, her resolve crumbling at his words. "I'd be pissed at me, too, I guess. I sort of took off without any warning."

"I'm not mad," Jack explained. "You honestly just scared the crap out of me. I didn't know what I was supposed to think. I figured when you didn't show up at school you were just sick, but then you didn't show up at school for the next two days and you didn't respond to any of my messages…I just didn't know what to think."

"I'm sorry, Jack," Sophie sighed, looking over at him as he turned onto the road that would practically take them all the way to school. "I didn't call you or text you because…I was sort of a mess."

He turned to her for a second, his blue eyes meeting hers. "Do you want to talk about it?"

She heaved a big breath. "Yeah. But not right now, okay? Everything's still kind of jumbled in my head, and…. Maybe this weekend you can come over, and I can just…get everything off of my chest."

Jack nodded, offering Sophie a small grin. "I won't push you. Clearly something pretty crappy happened. Is everyone okay? Your dad, Sam, Cas?"

"Yeah, for the most part," she said quietly. "The only casualty was my car."

"Wait, that's why I'm picking you up? I thought you just wanted to talk to me before school," Jack asked, surprised.

She shook her head. "Nope. I got in a teeny tiny car accident. Clearly, I'm fine, but the car's history."

"A teeny tiny accident?" Jack repeated, aghast. "Sophie, c'mon—"

"Hey, Jack, look at me!" she cut him off, waving her hands in the air and gesturing towards herself. "Clearly, I'm fine. Nobody else was hurt either. It's not a big deal."

"Not a big…." Jack just released a long breath and tried to calm himself down. "So you're not hurt?"

"Healthy as a horse."

"And nobody else is hurt?"

"No, I lied to you the first time, I actually annihilated a small town in Missouri."

He just gave her another look. "Okay, I get it. No one was hurt. Gotcha."

"But yeah. I'm all good," she assured him. "I just needed to get away from everything for a little bit, and I definitely went about it all the wrong way, but… I'm here now."

He grinned at her. "Well, if it matters, I'm glad you're back." Then he frowned. "You know what's weird? That kid Remy, he's been gone every day that you were."

Effortlessly, Sophie just grinned at him. "You're so obsessed with the dude that you're keeping tabs on him now? Apparently I have competition."

He just rolled his eyes. "No, just making a mental note. It's odd."

She pushed his shoulder lightly. "Maybe he's stalking me."

"Maybe he is," Jack said, a little too seriously.

Sophie rolled her eyes, and for a moment, it alarmed her how good she was at lying. "Yeah, Jack, because the new kid at school followed me all the way from Lebanon to North Carolina. It's probably just some weird coincidence. Those happen sometimes, you know."

"I know," Jack said, shaking his head as if trying to expel some weird thought. "I've just been in this weird funk the last few days, trying to get a hold of you. Remember at the beginning of the year when I told you that you drive me up a wall? That hasn't changed."

Sophie looked over at him and grinned. "Don't pretend you don't love it."

Jack turned into the high school parking lot. "Better be careful throwing around that 'L' word, S," he said, pulling into his parking spot and turning off the car. "One of these days I might just use it, and then what on earth are you going to do?"

And with that he gave her a wide grin, a wink, and then he opened the car door and got out, leaving her absolutely speechless in his car.

* * *

Over the course of the next week or so, Sophie began to notice something strange happening at school.

She'd always been a pretty likeable person. She wasn't best buddies with every single person at school, but she was friendly and it was fairly easy for her to strike up a conversation with pretty much anyone there, regardless of their social status or friend group. She was like the school equalizer, the person everyone could count on to have a good conversation with.

But recently, every single girl that Sophie would categorize as "popular" seemed to hate her.

It wasn't the most overt thing at first. When she'd asked Jack what he thought about it, he thought she was just seeing things or being paranoid. But after a while she knew that she wasn't imagining it. All of the prettiest girls at school that she used to wave at or say hello to wouldn't make eye contact with her, or if they did it was to glare or look annoyed. They avoided her in the halls, or deliberately asked someone else to borrow a pencil, or wouldn't pick her to be included in their group projects even though she was the smartest one in the class, or wouldn't respond back when she said hi.

And she couldn't make any sense of it at all.

Until the day she got suspended from school.

That day in her photography class, Sophie was uploading all of the photos from her camera onto her student account when her teacher, Ms. Deerfield, called her name.

Sophie looked up from her computer. "Yes?"

Ms. Deerfield, a young, pretty teacher who was only two years out of college, looked across the room at her with a smile. "I know you missed a few days of school last week, and that was when I told everyone about the end of semester assignment that's going to count as your midterm grade."

"Oh," Sophie said, biting the inside of her cheek. "Do you want me to stay after class to talk to you about it? Or I could ask someone else in the class."

Ms. Deerfield thought about it. Then she turned her head to look towards another student in the class. "April? You finished today's assignment, didn't you?"

The girl that Sophie recognized as the volleyball team captain looked up and nodded. "Yeah, I did."

Ms. Deerfield smiled at her. "Do you think you could help fill Sophie in on the midterm project? She was gone a few days and needs to know what's going on."

April turned to look at Sophie, looking annoyed but nodding. "Sure."

Sophie watched as April Levin stood up from her computer and made her way over to Sophie's. Sophie tried not to be a little bit self-conscious as the girl walked towards her. April was, by far, the prettiest girl at Lebanon Central. She had long brown hair that fell to midway down her back in shiny waves, and she had the prettiest blue-green eyes, and she was tall and leggy in a way that made pretty much every single guy in school drool over her. She was a part of the group that Remy usually hung out with, and Sophie had wondered if he found her attractive like the rest of the guys did. She hoped not, because the thought of a thousands-of-years-old angel crushing on a high school student was kind of creepy. Right?

April slid into the empty seat next to Sophie, and the shorter girl got a whiff of the volleyball captain's candy-scented perfume. "Hi," April said, looking at Sophie with a sideways glance. "So you need to know about the project?"

"Yeah," Sophie said, finishing the upload from her camera and then turning to April. "Did Ms. Deerfield give you any handouts or anything?"

"No," April said, eyeing Sophie's jeans and gray T-shirt, "but it looks like you'd know a thing or two about handouts."

Sophie just stared at April, open-mouthed. Did she just say what Sophie thought she said? Embarrassed, she just tried to ignore it. "Okay, well, what's the project then?" she asked in a quiet voice.

"Make a photo journal of a day in your life," April said flippantly, still eyeing Sophie distastefully. "Seriously, though, where the hell did you get your wardrobe? Goodwill?"

Sophie's eyes narrowed. So clearly, the shade she'd thrown Sophie's way the first time hadn't been on accident. "Um, do you have some kind of problem with me?"

"No," April said, turning her nose up at her like she was some kind of maggot. "I just don't get why he always looks at you. None of us get it. Especially when you look like you do."

"What?" Sophie asked, feeling completely clueless and humiliated. "What are you talking about?"

"Remy Angel," April said, as if it were obvious. "He's always staring at you. And I mean, you're kind of pretty-ish, I guess, but you'd need some real work if you wanted to be hot enough for someone who looks like him. I just don't get what he sees."

Sophie just scoffed. "Okay. Well, I don't know if you know, but I'm dating Jack Williams. Have been for a while. So you don't have to, like, worry about competition or anything."

April gave Sophie's outfit another look, and then also gave her beat up Converse a repulsed glance. "Well, obviously."

Now Sophie was pissed. "Wow, seriously, what's your damage? You're freaking gorgeous, so just move in and grab whatever guy you want at this school and stop bashing me because I don't feel like dumping a hundred bucks on a skirt as ugly as the one you're wearing."

April glared at her. "Okay, first of all, this skirt is Lilly Pulitzer. It's classy. Second of all, I've been wanting to hook up with Remy all year, but for some reason he's so not into me. And I think it's because for some reason he thinks you're better than me."

"Do you even hear how stupid you sound?" Sophie asked in amazement.

"Oh yeah," April said scathingly. "I do. How could anyone think you're better than me? I mean, sure, you're smart, but you look like all mommy and daddy can afford is sackcloth and some old used shoes. And hey, I know not everyone in the world can have dignity and class, but I know that Remy needs someone with both of those, and clearly, you don't have them."

Sophie just stared at April in utter disbelief. No one had ever spoken to her with such blatant, intended rudness before, not even Steve.

April responded to Sophie's utter incredulity with an annoyed look. "What? Did I just give you an epiphany about how utterly sad and unimportant your existence is?" she snapped.

"No," Sophie replied coolly. "I was just wondering how so much bitch fit into a girl that's already so full of herself." At that moment, the bell rang, and Sophie picked up her bag swiftly. "That's my cue. Thanks for the assignent, April, it's been great talking with you. _Hasta la vista_."

She made her way out of the door and started towards her next class, trying to process what had just happened, when she felt a hand roughly grab her arm and turn her around. She saw April's eyes flaring with anger. "Um, excuse me. You think you can just leave after saying that to me?"

Sophie was vaguely aware of all of the eyes on them as students began to leave class. "Well, you sort of just insulted the crap out of me, too, so I figured we were even," she said, turning around to leave again.

But then the hand fell on her arm again, and Sophie wrenched herself away from April's grip. "Stop touching me! You're freaking crazy!" Sophie snapped, turning to glare at April. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Remy exiting the photography class, eyeing the confrontation in mild interest.

"You don't mess with me, bitch," April said, glaring at her. "I did you a favor, telling you all that. Now maybe you can go try and upgrade your wardrobe a bit."

"Sure, okay. At least I could upgrade my wardrobe if I wanted. It's probably a little harder to upgrade your personality," Sophie snapped. She heard the slap to her face before she felt it, but then suddenly there was a stinging red mark on her cheek and her mouth was open in disbelief.

Was this actually happening? Was she getting into a girl fight with the volleyball captain right in the middle of the hallway? Over a guy Sophie wasn't even interested in?

Sophie knew that if she retaliated, she would probably really hurt April, and while the girl was all kinds of deserving of getting knocked around a bit, Sophie knew that it wasn't worth it. "Whatever, April," she said, rubbing her cheek a little in annoyance. The slap had hurt her ego more than anything else. "Have fun with your boy hunting. Let me know when you wrangle someone up so I can send them my condolences."

She turned to leave yet again, and then yelped as she felt herself being yanked backwards by her ponytail. This time, she couldn't help it. She grabbed April's hand, which was knotted in her hair, and twisted it until April let go and started screaming.

"Let go of me, you freak!" the taller girl screamed. Sophie obliged, but not until the hand was fully removed from her hair and she was free. When she turned around, she saw tears in April's eyes as she held her wrist, and she was staring daggers at Sophie. "I'm the star setter for the volleyball team, you psychopath! And you just broke my wrist!"

Sophie rolled her eyes. "I didn't break it. I _might _have sprained it. You'll live."

"What on _earth_ is going on here?"

Sophie turned and groaned as she saw Principal Grayling walking up to the scene. Immediately, she knew that this was going to look really bad. April was standing, red-faced and crying and holding her wrist, and Sophie was huffing angrily and looking relatively unharmed barring the fading red mark on her face and her messed up hair. Sophie had no clue what to say to him.

But April, being the charming human being that she was, immediately burst into tears. "Sophie and I were having a harmless argument, and then out of nowhere she just twists my arm and hurts my wrist! And regionals are coming up soon, I can't be hurt for the tournament!"

Principal Grayling looked at Sophie, shocked. "Is this true, Miss Winchester?"

Sophie looked from Principal Grayling to April and then back to the principal in utter exasperation. "Well, okay, _technically _yeah I twisted her arm, but—"

"Nope, save it," Principal Grayling said, sounding exhausted. "You two, in my office, now."

**Sorry it's taken so long to update, guys! But I'm back from vacation, very sunburned and well-rested and ready to write! Updates should be back on track from here on out, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Thank you all for reading, favoriting, following, and thank you especially to those who review my story! You all are marvelous. ~ Lacey :)**


	61. Chapter 61: Bitches And Bitchettes

_Chapter 61: Bitches and Bitchettes_

Sophie couldn't believe this was actually happening.

Fifteen minutes ago she'd maybe said all of three words to April Levin in her entire life, and now she was about to get in trouble for fighting with her in the hallway. And the fight hadn't even been legitimate; in fact, it had _barely _been a cat fight. If Sophie had even put an ounce of effort into the confrontation, April would be in the hospital.

This was a complete joke. Sophie would have preferred a horde of demons unleashed on her over this whole April situation. Because at least demons made sense. Bitchy volleyball captains, however, were on a whole new level.

She passed by Remy as she followed Principal Grayling back to his office, and she could see the entertained look on his face at what had just gone down. He mouthed _Good job, Ace _to her as she walked by him, and she shot him a pissed off glare. Now even angrier than before, she furiously clasped the straps of her backpack in an effort to avoid hitting someone or something, and silently followed Principal Grayling into his office.

He sat her down in one of the chairs and motioned for April to sit in the other. April was still whimpering and clutching her hurt wrist to her chest as if it had been shattered, not tweaked. Sophie had to resist rolling her eyes at the show April was putting on.

Principal Grayling sat back in his chair, looking at the two of them silently for a long while before letting out a long breath. "First thing's first, I need to call both of your parents."

"What?" Sophie exclaimed, as April just nodded tearfully. "No, you…you can't. Just give me a detention or something."

"I'm sorry, Sophie, but rules are rules. We have to inform the parents that there's been a violent altercation," Principal Grayling told her, looking up something on his computer. He then dialed the first number onto the phone, and after a few rings he started talking to a Mr. Levin, who must've been April's father. Sophie had to listen with a sinking feeling in her stomach as Principal Grayling asked Mr. Levin to drive to the school so that he could speak with him in person, and once he hung up, he glanced at the computer screen and dialed the second number on the phone.

Sophie wanted to throw up when she heard her principal say into the phone, "Hello, Mr. Winchester, this is Robert Grayling, I'm your daughter's principal. I'm sorry to say that Sophie was involved in a fight at school today, and she's sitting here in my office right now as we figure out what exactly happened." There was a pause, and Sophie strained to hear what Dean might be saying. She was pretty sure that she heard the word _joke_. "Unfortunately, no, it's not, Mr. Winchester. I was wondering if you could come down to the school so that we can all talk this through." Another pause. "Excellent, thank you."

Sophie's heart thudded in her chest as he hung up the phone and looked at the two of them. It was odd, because she hadn't thought twice about breaking rules like getting fake documents from Sam and Dean and driving before she was sixteen, or breaking and entering into that abandoned mall in Florida when she had to save Sam and Dean from the vampires over the summer, or taking off and running away to North Carolina. But the moment her principal called her into the office, the childhood fear of getting in trouble began to settle in her stomach.

She guessed that some things just never changed.

After a long observation of the two girls in front of him, the tired-looking man sighed. "Both of your fathers are coming here to talk this through and pick you up. Neither of you will be returning to class today."

"Principal Grayling, I—" Sophie started.

He held up a finger. "Seeing as April is the one with the hurt wrist, I'm going to hear her out first."

Sophie let out a long breath and sat back in her chair, looking over in utter annoyance as April tearfully began to recount a disgustingly inaccurate story about how Sophie lashed out and twisted her wrist out of pure spite in the middle of their "tiny little disagreement." Sophie tried to cut in a few times to defend herself, but Principal Grayling just shot her a few impatient looks and she quieted, letting April finish spinning her web of ridiculous lies and half-truths.

When she was finished, nearly fifteen minutes later, the principal just nodded. "Okay. Now, Sophie, you can give me your side of—"

At that moment, the door to the office burst open, and a rather large blonde man wearing a suit and tie walked in, looking thunderous. "April, baby cakes," he said as his dark eyes landed on the sniffling brunette to Sophie's right. "Oh, darling, what happened to you?"

"My wrist, D-daddy," April whimpered. "I think it's b-broken."

Bristling, the man turned towards Sophie. "What the hell did you do to my daughter?"

"Mr. Levin," Principal Grayling said sharply. "There's no need to use that kind of tone with one of my students. I was just about to ask Sophie for her side of the story."

"You don't need her side of the story," Mr. Levin said sharply, looking down at Sophie, with her not-designer clothes and obvious lack of luxurious upkeep, in the same kind of distaste that April had been expressing earlier. Clearly, these people had a huge superiority complex. "My daughter's sitting here with a broken wrist, not even a week before her big game, and this little lout is sittin' pretty here without a single feather ruffled. Clearly this ain't my girl's fault!"

Sophie opened her mouth in protest. "Lout?" she repeated incredulously. "I am not a lout. Who calls anyone a lout?"

Mr. Levin looked like he was about to bust a gasket. "You watch the way you talk to me, little lady! Do you know who I am?"

"My name's not _little lady_," Sophie told him as firmly as she could in her quiet voice. "It's Sophie."

"I don't care if you're the damn Queen of England, you hurt my sweet baby girl and if you knew who I was, you'd know you picked on the wrong girl!"

Sophie could feel anger bubbling up past her fear of getting in trouble. "Clearly, you're a father who can't see that he's been raising the spawn of Satan for the last sixteen years." Then she clamped her mouth shut, eyes wide. She couldn't believe she'd actually said that. Dean was definitely rubbing off on her a little too much.

"Miss Winchester, you're not helping your case!" Principal Grayling snapped, sounding overwhelmed.

Mr. Levin didn't seem to really care, though. "I am the District Attorney of Smith County, little lady, so unless you want me to press charges for assault, I'd watch what you say!"

"Assault? _Assault_? Are you kidding me?" Sophie exclaimed, eyes growing even wider, looking back at Principal Grayling for help and then back to Mr. Levin. "Look, mister, your daughter attacked _me_. I was just defending myself. Ask anyone who saw us, there were like fifteen kids around! She hit me and freaking pulled my hair because she thinks I want to date the guy she has a crush on, even though _I already have a boyfriend,_ and I was just trying to make her let go of me! This is _so _not my fault!"

Principal Grayling made eye contact with her, and Sophie felt a wave of relief hit her. She could see in his eyes that he believed her. She wasn't sure what it was—her genuine disbelief that any of this was happening, Mr. Levin's obnoxious defense of his daughter, or April's obvious crocodile tears—but either way, she could tell the principal believed her.

But before he could say anything, Mr. Levin clasped the back of Sophie's chair and brought his face close to hers in an effort to be intimidating. "I don't know you, girly, but I know my daughter, and she's an angel. She wouldn't lie to a single soul!"

"Mr. Levin! That's enough!" Principal Grayling said loudly, standing up. "She's a teenage girl, not your witness to question! Show some class!"

"Class?" Mr. Levin roared, and Sophie could smell stale coffee masked by cinnamon gum on his breath, he was so close to her. She flinched at his nearness, moving her head back instinctively. He glared at Sophie, pulling her chair so that it scooted closer to him with her in it, her face just inches from his. Her eyes widened in genuine intimidation. Daughter of a hunter or not, giant men yelling in her face weren't exactly one hundred percent harmless. "You wanna tell someone to show some class, Grayling, you beat it into this little piece of trailer trash that hurt my baby girl. Or better yet, let me—"

Suddenly, there was a hand on Mr. Levin's shoulder, Sophie saw the man's eyes grow bigger in surprise as he was yanked back roughly out of Sophie's face. When she looked up, she saw Dean pushing the much larger man away from her, forcing Mr. Levin to fall into the wall. Her dad's face was relatively emotion-neutral, but Sophie knew that was how Dean looked when he was pissed. He brought his face very close to Mr. Levin's, the tone of his voice low and even. "You talk about beating _anything _into my daughter like that one more time, big guy, and I will beat my fist into your cakehole so hard you're going to be crapping teeth."

Mr. Levin looked like he wanted to retaliate, but then he looked at April's wide, teary eyes and Principal Grayling's calm acceptance of Dean's threat, and he backed off, his face so red it was almost purple.

Dean grinned at Mr. Levin and clapped him roughly on the chest just a little bit too hard, causing him to release a wheezy breath. "That's what I thought," he said, and then he plopped himself down in the only remaining seat, slinging his arm around the back of Sophie's chair. She looked up at him, slightly sheepishly, and he just shot her a quick smirk before looking back at Grayling. "Now, Mr. Principal, what seems to be the problem?"

* * *

Sophie slid into the front seat of the Impala, arms crossed and mouth pressed into a hard line. She watched as Dean slid into the driver's seat, and she waited, dreading the inevitable disappointed speech she was bound to get from him.

He looked over at her, and then a huge smile split his face. "Today is the day," he proclaimed, starting the Impala and pulling out of the parking lot.

Sophie stared at him, wondering if he'd lost it. She waited for a few long moments, wondering if he was going to elaborate on his own. When he didn't, she just gave him a very confused look. "Huh?"

"Today is the day that I finally claim you," Dean said. "I officially have decided that you are my kid. I mean, I considered it, that morning when I walked in on you rocking out to Aerosmith, but today it's official."

Sophie rolled her eyes. She was starting to think that one of these days, her eyes weren't going to be able to roll anymore out of overuse. "Well I'm glad that's cleared up. The ambiguity in the air has been killing me."

"I'm serious. I'm not sure if I've ever been more proud of you," Dean told her, grinning as some Scorpions song began to play on the radio.

Sophie just gawked at him, green eyes wide with disbelief. "I got a 1510 on my first round of SATs, but my one day suspension from school is what you're proudest of?"

"You betcha," Dean said, turning onto the main road. "Plus that annoying April girl got suspended for the rest of the week, which is great. Her father's a real piece of work, too, I'd've liked to take him out back old school style and show him that District Attorney or not, he ain't worth jack sh—"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure if he'd gotten any angrier he would've had a coronary right then and there," Sophie said, laughing as she cut him off. Then she glanced at her dad again. "So…you're seriously not mad?"

Dean considered her question. "Well, okay, if you want me to be a little critical… you should have broken the wrist. Maybe her arm. Brunette Barbie deserved it."

"Yeah, well," Sophie sighed, "if I'd done that her dad probably would've shot me on the spot or something. God forbid his 'sweet baby girl' not be able to play in the big game."

"If that doughnut-loving son of a bitch had done anything more than yell at you like he was when I got there, I would have gone all stabby with him with one of your principal's twenty million ballpoint pens," Dean said, stepping on the gas a little more.

"If you hadn't stepped in when you had, I probably would've broken his nose, and then I probably would've been expelled," Sophie said. "So I'm glad you came when you did. Poor Principal Grayling looked like he was about to pass out."

"Guy's got no spine," Dean replied sadly. "But he seems nice enough, I guess. Let you off with a suspension that won't go on your permanent record if you make up all the work you miss. Pretty sweet deal."

She groaned and slid down in her seat. "But now everyone at school is going to be talking about me."

"What's this?" Dean asked, a hint of amusement in his eyes. "Sophie Winchester is actually _complaining _about school? Hold on, let me grab some paper, I need to document this."

"Just shut up and keep driving," Sophie grumbled, crossing her arms.

"Oh, so now you're a trouble-maker that gets suspended from school _and _you're rude," Dean commented. He paused thoughtfully for a few more seconds. "God, I am so proud of you."

* * *

When they got back to the bunker, the first thing Sophie noticed was the car parked outside of the bunker. "Um, Dad?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said, getting out of the Impala and shutting the door.

"Did we finally get a cleaning lady or something?" she asked, gesturing towards the car.

Dean looked at it and then his mouth opened in understanding. "Oh. Right. That. Well, Sam and I were going to tell you, but…. Remember when Cas told us it was time to pull out all of the stops when it came to figuring out this whole Beelzebub thing?"

"I do," she said, still eyeing the car quizzically.

"Yeah, well, this is the ace up our sleeve," Dean said, a little cryptically.

"Who is it?" Sophie asked, hoisting her backpack up onto her shoulder.

"A friend of ours," Dean said, making his way inside the bunker, Sophie following behind him. "You'll like her."

"Her?" Sophie repeated as they made their way down the staircase.

"Yeah, she's a bundle of energy, let me tell you, more of a child than you to be honest—"

"What's up, bitches!"

Sophie looked up in surprise as a brightly dressed redhead looked up from her spot on the table in the main room. And that wasn't figurative—the woman was actually sitting on top of the table, a pair of hot pink headphones around her neck and two laptops and an iPad sitting in front of her. She looked to be in her late twenties or early thirties, but her wardrobe looked like it had come straight off of the Limited Too shelves Sophie had coveted so much as a kid. Sophie just gawked at her, and the girl grinned at her.

Dean walked forward, standing between them. "Sophie, meet Charlie Bradbury. Charlie, Sophie."

The girl, Charlie, slipped down from off the table and practically hurdled into Sophie, wrapping her arms around her in a bone-crunching hug. "Holy hard drives, it is insane to finally meet you!" the girl exclaimed.

Sophie just stared over Charlie's shoulder, wide eyes locked on Dean in shock. He looked about two seconds away from bursting out laughing. "Soph, Charlie's a friend of ours. She's helped us get out of a lot of crap. Don't let the preteen wardrobe fool you, she's sharp as a tack."

Charlie let go of Sophie and looked at her with a wide grin. "You're sort of famous on the hunter's circuit, Sophie," Charlie told her. "Dean Winchester's long lost daughter. Just wow."

Sophie tried to muster up a convincing grin. "Yeah, guess I'm one for the books."

"You sure are," Dean said as he slung his arm around Sophie and squished her to him, to her annoyance. She wriggled away from him and smoothed out her shirt. "Charlie, you just missed my very first 'I'm so proud of you' speech," Dean said, shooting an amused glance at Sophie, who rolled her eyes again, as much as she tried not to. "My sweet little daughter just got her very first suspension from school."

"Oh," Charlie responded, looking at Sophie with a sparkle in her eye. "What'd you do?"

"A lot less than I wish I'd done," she sighed. "See, there's this girl, April—"

Charlie held up a hand. "Say no more. I've always thought that girls named after months are, like, über pretentious."

"You can say that again," Sophie mumbled.

Dean chuckled, and then Charlie took a step closer to Sophie, giving her a long, borderline intense look. Sophie just blinked, trying to figure out what exactly Charlie was trying to do.

Then the taller redhead looked back at Dean. "Did you know she has, like, your _exact _eyes? It's like how everybody in Harry Potter is always telling Harry that he has Lily's eyes, but now it's Sophie that has your eyes! Seriously it's kind of creepy, even your eyelashes are kind of similar—"

"You've been staring at my eyelashes too much for someone who's not even attracted to my gender," Dean pointed out, walking around to where Charlie had been sitting on the table so that he could glance at her computer screen.

Sophie looked up at Charlie, letting Dean's words sink in, and then she heaved a big sigh. "Of course."

Charlie looked mildly offended, and even Dean looked surprised. "What?" Charlie asked, a little bit defensively.

Immediately Sophie felt terrible. "Oh my God, that wasn't supposed to be an 'of course you're a lesbian' type of 'of course.' It was supposed to be an 'of course the only attractive female friend Dean Winchester can manage to have has to be one that can't be attracted to him because otherwise he'd ruin it by sleeping with them because he's a pig' type of 'of course.'" She paused, and then added, "Not that you aren't your own human being that makes their own decisions and doesn't have to sleep with…oh crap, I'm making no sense, you think I'm crazy now."

It was Dean's turn to look offended. "I can have a straight attractive female friend that I don't sleep with. I have self-control."

"Oh, please," Sophie and Charlie said at the same time, with matching eye rolls. Then they just looked at each other and burst out laughing.

"You two teaming up against me is _not _allowed to happen," Dean snapped, pointing his finger in their direction. "You both are already smarter than me individually. Coming at me as a duo is just cruel."

Charlie and Sophie just laughed again, and then Charlie looked at Sophie. "To answer you, I don't think you're crazy. I totally get what you're saying. Dean's not really the friend-making type. I just got lucky. And not in the sexual sense." She turned to wink at Dean and then glanced back at Sophie. "I'm still holding out for Scar-Jo, if we're being honest."

Sophie laughed. "At least you have standards." She gave Dean a pointed glare.

"I have standards," Dean replied in an exasperated voice.

"You have crap standards," Sophie responded. "Pretty, leggy, legal—that's about it."

"Hey," Dean snapped. "Keep in mind that my so called 'crap standards' are the reason why you were even created. There is nothing wrong with a healthy sex drive." Then he looked at Sophie and immediately reconsidered his words. "Except for you. I want your sex drive completely crippled and in the very worst health it can possibly be in. In fact, I want it squashed. Dead."

"Of my God, ew, ew, not having this conversation," Sophie said, covering her ears with her hands.

"If this conversation destroys your sex drive we're gonna have it every day, sweetheart," Dean told her gruffly.

Sophie made a gagging sound and then looked over at Charlie. "Great to meet you, Charlie, really, but I have to go dump acid in my ears in an attempt to un-hear that. I'll see you later, I'm sure."

"Later, bitchette," Charlie told her, and she was still laughing as Sophie made her way to the hallway her room was in, and when Sophie turned the corner she heard the bubbly woman tell her father, "I like her, Dean."

"Yeah," her dad responded, and she could hear the fondness in his voice. "I mean, I don't hate her."

Sophie smirked and disappeared inside of her room.

* * *

About an hour later, after she'd gotten off the phone with a very concerned and overtalkative Jamie about what had gone down with April at school, Sophie reemerged from her room and went into the kitchen, where she grabbed a glass of water and then walked out into the main room, where Sam, Dean, and Charlie all sat at the table discussing God knew what.

When she walked in, Dean looked up. "Hey."

Sam glanced at her as well. "I heard you got suspended," he said, his voice sounding slightly disapproving.

"Finally," Sophie sighed in relief. "Somebody who's actually _disappointed _that I got in trouble. Thank you, Sam."

"You're welcome?" he replied slowly, eyebrow raised. Sophie just took a sip of her water in reply. "But seriously, you've got to be careful. If you have anything too serious on your record there's no way you'll get into college."

Sophie nodded. "I know. But Sam, you should meet this girl. I don't really like to use this word flippantly, but she's a straight up bitch."

"Yeah," Dean chimed in, "and her dad's an asshole, too. They're a charming pair."

"I'm telling you, girls with month names are the worst," Charlie piped up as she tied her bright hair into a ponytail. "I had this thing with a girl named June once, and she started off, like, super amazing, but then she got all crazy and starting making me call her Junie-poo and made me watch her ridiculous Chihuahua on the weekends, and….none of you care, do you?"

Sophie laughed. "I care. I just think that April is a new brand of crazy."

Charlie offered her a sweet grin. "Aw, honey. You just have never experienced the Queen Bitch phenomenon."

"The what?" Sophie asked, confused.

" The Queen Bitch phenomenon," Charlie repeated matter-of-factly. "Clearly, you've managed to spend your whole school life flying under the radar, not being a threat to the reigning Queen Bitch. You've done your own thing, didn't mess with the status quo, didn't rock the boat. But now that you're all buddy-buddy with the hot bad boy-slash-angel-slash-guy the reigning Queen Bitch wants to bang, you're officially Undesirable Number One. If she hasn't already, she'll try to turn the whole school against you. Classic Queen Bitch phenomenon."

Sophie just stared blankly at her. "How do you know all of this?"

"About the Queen Bitch phenomenon? Because I was a nerdy lesbian girl in a high school with two thousand students. Not exactly a very forgiving atmosphere. About your guardian angel?" Charlie looked a little sheepish. "Dean filled me in on the whole guardian angel thing. Pretty strange, kinda rad, very Winchester."

_Pretty strange, kinda rad, very Winchester_. Sophie made a mental note to make that the title of her autobiography, if she ever were to write one. "Yeah, well, it's not my fault. I don't even really talk to Remy that much at school. We just sometimes…make eye contact and stuff. It's kind of hard not to when your souls are connected or whatever."

"I didn't say it's your fault, Casanova," Charlie said with a shrug. "I'm just saying, welcome to the world of teenage bitch-dom. Believe me, it sucks."

Sophie sighed, and then plopped down in the chair next to Dean. "Well, at least I don't need to worry about it until the next time I show up to school," she reasoned. "And, thanks to April, I'm suspended for now, so yay for me." She glanced at all of Charlie's tech stuff. "So…. I take it you're some sort of genius?"

Charlie, Sam, and Dean all grinned. "Well, I'm a technology genius," Charlie said. "Common sense, not always as much."

"Eh, you're getting better with that," Dean said with a laugh.

Sophie grinned. It was kind of nice seeing Dean interact with someone other than her, Sam, or Cas that he cared about. And clearly, Charlie was an odd extension of their ragtag little family of hunters, misfits, and angels. It made Sophie wonder who else in their lives she was missing out on, who else she didn't know about or would never know.

"And you're helping us with…with the rituals?" Sophie asked. Sam had brought her up to speed on all of the headway they'd made on trying to save Dean's soul from Beelzebub, and she was still trying to wrap her head around the whole bizarre situation.

Charlie nodded. "I'm trying to crack the weird language the Ritual of Fire is written in. It looks like its roots are Akkadian, and it's written in what appears to be some strange rendition of Mesopotamian cuneiform, but I've got my friends here running samples of the text through pretty much every language database in the world, so if any bit of this language has been documented on any sort of electronic database, we'll find it." She patted her laptops lovingly.

Sophie just stared. "Wow," she said. "And to think I have trouble connecting to WiFi sometimes."

Charlie nodded. "Yeah, well, it's probably hard to be technologically savvy when you're Dean Winchester's daughter. Dude doesn't even know what a CPU is."

Dean just shrugged. "I don't need to speak geek, Charlie. That's why I have you and Sam."

"Damn straight," Charlie said cheerily. She stood up and stretched. "Well, this baby is just going to keep running until it gets a hit or busts. So I'm going to go grab some food. Burgers work for you guys?"

"You are not the genius I believe you to be if you even have to ask that," Dean pointed out.

Charlie grinned. "Burgers it is! I'll see you bitches in few. You too, bitchette," she said, throwing Sophie a wink. She grabbed her keys and jumped her way up the stairs two at a time until she disappeared out of the bunker.

When she was gone, Sophie sighed. "Why'd you guys have to hide your fun friend from me for so long?"

"We didn't hide her," Dean said, shrugging. "We just…we try not to pull her in on cases all that often. We sort of prefer Charlie alive."

Sophie nodded. "I guess I get that. Still, you should've given me her address or something. We would have made great pen pals."

"Nobody even has pen pals anymore, Sophie," Dean said, looking a little bit amused. "Welcome to the twenty-first century."

Sophie was about to snap something about how that was a very rich statement coming from the guy who drove around a 1967 Impala like he was the hottest thing on the block, but she was interrupted by his phone ringing. He pulled the phone from his pocket and frowned as he looked at the screen. "It's your school," he said.

Sophie groaned. "What do they want to do now? Expel me?"

Dean just shrugged and stood up, walking into the other room as he answered it. "Yeah?" Sophie heard him say as he rounded the corner and disappeared into another room.

She sighed and looked over at Sam. "Guess it's just us now," she noted.

"Yep," Sam said. He gave her a close look. "So I've gotta know—what exactly did that April girl say to you to make you go off? You're usually pretty level-headed."

Sophie shook her head. "I didn't go off on her. She wouldn't stop trying to pick a fight and at one point she pulled my hair, and I twisted her wrist so she'd let go of me."

"No, I know that. I still just want to know what she said."

Sophie shrugged. "She has it in her head that Remy likes me because of how we act towards each other at school. Which I guess isn't a huge stretch, Remy and I kind of purposefully avoid each other in the halls but sometimes we kind of make eye contact and have awkward conversations…I mean, I guess that might look like two people who have crushes on each other. But April seemed to take it kind of personally, so when Ms. Deerfield told her to give me the information for our photography midterm she took it as an opportunity to attack me." Sophie crossed her arms in annoyance. "She started going on about how it was crazy that Remy would prefer 'trailer trash' like me to someone as classy and perfect as her. It was ridiculous. I'm not trailer trash, I'm trailer _gold_."

Sam snorted. "Trailer gold. That's the spirit," he said, chuckling. "She sounds straight out of an awful chick flick."

"You don't even know."

"Well, I'm glad you didn't let her walk all over you," Sam said, grinning at her. "Just…maybe try not to get suspended the next time."

"Hey, I'll do my best," Sophie said. "But I'm also not going to just turn the other cheek and let her hurl insults at me. Although I doubt she'll be talking to me anytime soon. Dad scares the crap out of her and her dad now, I'm pretty sure."

"Dean said something like her dad's the D.A. of Smith county," Sam said. "Is that true?"

"Yep," Sophie sighed. "My mortal enemy is the daughter of the most powerful attorney in the county. Isn't life grand?"

"Yeah, well my mortal enemy is Satan, so consider yourself lucky," Sam told her, a tiny spark of humor in his hazel eyes.

"Touché."

At that moment Dean walked back into the room, looking stricken. Immediately, Sophie was worried. "What'd they want?" she asked tentatively.

"That was your hot secretary, Michelle," Dean started slowly. "She called because apparently, today's conversation with the principal reminded him that I haven't completed any of the service hours I'm supposed to have done for the school."

Grins lit up both Sophie's and Sam's faces when they saw where this was going. "She made you sign up to volunteer for something, didn't she?" Sophie teased.

Dean threw her a glare. "This is all your fault," he snapped. "If you had just let that girl bully you without retaliating, they never would have remembered that I've been skipping out on the whole parent involvement thing."

Sophie rolled her eyes. "So one minute you're the proudest you've ever been of me for getting into a fight at school, and now that it has inconvenienced you you're deciding you're disappointed."

"Hell yeah," he replied loudly. "Dean Winchester does not volunteer. Especially for this freaking…," he looked down at the paper in his hand, which he had written something down on, "_Holly Ball fundraiser_. I feel emasculated just _saying _that."

Sophie grinned. "Oh come on, it won't kill you."

"Demons won't kill me. Vampires won't kill me. Ghosts won't kill me. But this dumbass event? It will definitely kill me."

"If it makes you feel any better," Sophie tried, "I'll be there during set-up, clean-up, and the whole event itself. Student government oversees the whole thing."

"Great," Dean grumbled. "Not only do I have to humiliate myself by even showing up for this damn thing, but you have to be there witness it."

"Don't worry, I'll only take a _couple _pictures instead of a couple hundred," she teased.

He glared at her and then looked at Sam, who looked as happy as a kid in a candy store. "Don't look so smug, Sammy, you're coming, too."

The grin dropped from Sam's face faster than traffic lights. "What?"

"Yeah, I might've told Michelle that I was bringing some help," Dean admitted.

"No freaking way," Sam said, shaking his head. "You're the one who had the kid, you get to shoulder the volunteerism."

"Nope, too late, you're in," Dean said with a grin on his face. "If I have to deal with this, so do you."

"You two are acting like helping out a bit at my school is the worst thing you've ever had to do," Sophie muttered. "Why don't you guys just suck it up, pull on your big boy pants, and deal with it."

"Watch it," Dean grumbled, "or I'll make you…do something you don't like to do that I can't really think of right now, but believe me, I'll make you do it."

"You give awful threats," Sophie told him matter-of-factly.

"Only to you," Dean said under his breath.

Sophie just shook her head. "The Holly Ball fundraiser is going to be a cakewalk. All you guys are going to have to do is help set up some chairs and tables, maybe throw on a few tablecloths. You'll be in and out in no time."

Dean still looked annoyed. "I'm Dean Winchester. This is ridiculous. I don't decorate for dumb parties, I freaking stab demons and claw my way out of Hell and stop the world from ending."

"You're so full of yourself," Sophie told him, green eyes sparkling with amusement. She was clearly enjoying this turmoil of his. "And you didn't claw your way out of Hell, Cas pulled you out."

"But I'm _Dean Winchester_," Dean repeated, ignoring her correction. "You haven't known me for quite as long as I've known me, but believe me, I would rather—"

"I don't care what you'd rather do," Sophie said simply, standing up swiftly. "I just care that you show up so that Principal Grayling is off of your back. I don't want any more added attention put on me at school. I just want to try and fly under the radar as best I can until this whole April thing blows over. So don't turn this into a thing, okay? Please?"

At that, Dean wilted. "Fine. Fine. We'll do this thing as painlessly as possible. Right Sammy?"

"I hate you," was all Sam said in reply, but when Dean looked away Sam shot Sophie a wink.

"Thank you," she said, taking a deep breath.

Suddenly there was the sound of a door opening and closing, and then the sound of cheery humming hit Sophie's ears. She looked up in time to see Charlie bobbing her head to a song playing inside her own head as the bag of burgers and fries swung in her hands.

When she made it to the table, she plopped the bag in front of everyone and announced, "Soup's on!" Then she took a closer look at everyone's faces, and immediately Sophie could tell she felt left out.

"Well crap, bitches. What did I miss?"

**Little bit of a longer chapter, but I just had to group all of this together! I definitely didn't plan on Charlie being in this story when I started it, but I just love her, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to bring her in. Since the Mark of Cain storyline never occured in this story, she's sort of taking up her role from that in the show here in this story. Plus, like Dean said, I prefer Charlie alive.**

**Hope you enjoyed! Let me know in the reviews! Until Saturday! ~ Lacey :)**


	62. Chapter 62: So So Sober

_Chapter 62: So So Sober_

Sophie had predicted one thing correctly. When she returned to school, she was the talk of the hallways.

Jack stood by her side as much as he could, trying to be the human shield that deflected most of the whispers by distracting her with idle conversation, but he did little to hide her from the stares. They weren't exactly mean stares—not a lot of people were April Levin's number one fans, and even those that were probably enjoyed seeing her knocked down off of her pedestal. But still, people were looking at Sophie in a new light. She wasn't just that harmless, sweet, smart classmate anymore. She was the girl who stood up to April Levin and twisted her prized volleyball-playing wrist. She was Someone Different.

She leaned into Jack a little as they walked to American Lit together. "Why won't they stop staring?" she growled. "Is this town so tiny no one's ever seen a good old fashioned girl fight?"

She felt a laugh ripple through Jack. "Girl fights, we've seen. Sophie Winchester vs. April Levin? That wasn't a girl fight, that was a confrontation worth nationally televising."

"Oh, please," Sophie scoffed. "She pulled my hair and I twisted her wrist."

"And from what I heard, it was epic."

Sophie looked up at Jack. "It's just stupid. It's all so freaking stupid. I never asked for that fight." Jack's eyes met hers, and she was surprised to see hesitation in his gaze. "What?"

"I…," he started, clearly mentally debating whether or not to say what was on his mind. Finally, he gave in. "Word on the street is you two were…fighting about Remy Angel."

Sophie's mouth dropped open and she stopped, pulling Jack over towards a wall lined with lockers. "Jack, no. Don't even think that."

"So you weren't fighting about Remy?" he asked, eyebrow raised.

Sophie bit down on her cheek. "Well…_she _was fighting about Remy." Jack's face fell, and her heart sunk. She hated this. She hated this so much. "Jack, listen, I feel nothing for him. Nothing. Does that register with you at all?"

Jack looked insecure. "Well, if April and the rest of those girls think he's crushing on you, he probably is."

Sophie rolled her eyes. "Has it ever occurred to you that maybe it doesn't mean a damn thing if Remy likes me?"

The look of disbelief on Jack's face would have been adorable to Sophie it hadn't been so annoying. "What's that supposed to mean, it shouldn't mean a thing that the guy in school that no one will shut up about even three months into school likes my girlfriend?"

Sophie heaved a big breath, staring straight into Jack's eyes, trying to make sure she had his undivided attention. "It means," she started slowly, "that Remy could be head over heels in love with me, and it wouldn't matter because I don't feel the same way. It sort of has to be a two way street. And I'm with _you_. That's _my _choice. Now, whether or not you feel the same way back, I can't control that. If you want to let some guy's crush on me get in the way of us, then I guess that's your prerogative—"

And then his lips were on hers, and he shifted their bodies so they were against the lockers. Sophie grinned against Jack's lips as he pushed her into the cold metal, with one hand placed on the lockers to the left of her head and the other playing with her hair. This was about as sexy as kissing in a high school hallway could get, and Sophie was over the moon. She couldn't lie, she was a bit afraid that the way she'd been talking might have pushed him away, but clearly, the way he was pulling her in and kissing her proved otherwise.

The bell rang, and Sophie pulled away and giggled. Then she blushed. She never _giggled_. But that's the kind of guy Jack was, pushing and pulling at her and bringing out sides of her that she'd never even imagined were there. "We're late for class," she laughed softly.

"Let's skip," Jack said, moving his mouth back to hers, trailing to her neck.

Sophie giggled again, to her own astonishment. _Sophie, what's gotten into you?_ "Jack, what's gotten into you?"

He lifted his head and looked down at her, grinning warmly. "I just realized that I'm a lucky, lucky moron. And you've got to be kind of a moron, too, if you're with me."

"Yeah," Sophie said, grinning. "A lucky moron."

And then she pulled him down to kiss him again, and they continued for a couple more minutes until finally, Sophie pulled away again. "Aw, c'mon, S," Jack whined.

"I was literally _just _suspended," she said under her breath. "I can't skip class the day I get back from getting _suspended_."

Jack groaned, but he straightened up and let Sophie lean up from the lockers. "Why do you have to be such a nerdy, little goody two shoes?"

"Hey, remember what you just said about being a lucky moron? You need to appreciate me for who I am," she said playfully, readjusting the straps of her backpack. "Now c'mon, _Invisible Man _isn't going to read itself."

Jack just smiled at Sophie. "You're going to be the death of me, S."

She gave him a look. "In my family's line of work? You better knock on wood."

Jack just laughed, and, both of their faces still a little flushed and their hair still a little mussed, they walked into American Lit side by side.

* * *

When Sophie got home from school that day, the first thing she saw was Charlie sitting at her usual perch on the table surrounded by her computers.

"Hey," Sophie called out to her, waving at the redhead as she looked up from her screen to smile at her.

"What's up, bitchette?" Charlie asked brightly.

"Well, it took up basically all of my energy, but I managed to avoid Remy at school for the entire day," Sophie announced.

"Sounds healthy," Charlie replied, amused.

Sophie looked around the bunker and frowned. "Where's my dad and Sam?"

"Oh," Charlie said, straightening up. "I was supposed to tell you. They got a call from a hunter friend of theirs, they ran off to go kill a Vetala in Utah."

"Oh," Sophie said. She was frozen for a moment, but then she just shook her head and sighed. "Usually they say bye first," she grumbled, throwing her bag on the table.

Charlie gave her an apologetic look. "Sam said you'd say that. They promised to call when they got settled in."

Sophie just nodded. "Alright." She sat down at the table and pulled out her calc textbook. "Are you getting anywhere on the ritual?"

Charlie shrugged. "Honestly, not really. This is one freakishly old language." She looked up and saw Sophie's disappointed face, and she immediately kept going. "But don't sweat it, Baby Charlie, I'm, like, _way_ good at what I do. I've zapped Dean's ass out of trouble almost as many times as he's zapped mine out of trouble." Then she reconsidered. "Actually, that's a lie, he's definitely saved me way more. But I've done my fair share of ass saving, too."

Sophie snorted. "And how exactly am I Baby Charlie?"

Charlie gave her a sly look. "Well clearly, you're way smart. Maybe not computer smart, but still very Mensa-y. And you can be a bit of a nerd. I might've snuck into your room and saw that you have all three extended editions of the Lord of the Rings. And then, of course, there's the whole ginger connection."

"My hair's not _that _red," Sophie mumbled, touching her hair defensively.

"So it's not quite my shade of Lucille Ball," Charlie said with a shrug. "You've still got a teeny bit of ginger going on, and that's enough to claim you as Baby Charlie."

Sophie laughed. "Alright, I can live with that."

Charlie glanced at the textbook in Sophie's hands. "Calc, huh?"

"Yep," Sophie sighed. "I hate it, but I'm good at it."

"Life's rough when you're good at everything, isn't it?" Charlie said.

"Tell me about it," Sophie replied in the most dramatic voice she could muster.

The two young women fell into laughter, and Sophie looked up at Charlie with a grin. She'd never had any siblings, but she had always thought it'd be pretty awesome to have an older sister. And Charlie was about as close to that kind of person in her life as anyone would probably ever be.

As the laughter died down, Charlie just glanced at her computers and sighed, seeming to surrender herself to the fact that she wouldn't be getting any hits on the ritual language anytime soon. So she held out her hand and motioned for Sophie to hand her the calc textbook.

"Let's talk convergent series."

* * *

Later that night, Charlie and Sophie watched _The Fellowship of the Ring _and dissected all of the differences between the book and the movie. Sophie had almost forgotten how fun it was to be friends with a nerd.

For the first time in a long time, she allowed herself to reopen the old wound that had been inflicted on her heart when Patrick had been killed. Her very first best friend. The one who'd been slaughtered just hours after her kidnapping, the one who demons had torn apart just because he'd been the closest person to the daughter of Dean Winchester.

His death still weighed on Sophie's mind a lot. She knew Dean didn't think twice about it; he hated that an innocent had died because of him, sure, and he hated that Sophie had lost a friend because she just happened to be his daughter, but he'd lost so many people in his life that this one particular loss just rolled off his back.

But Sophie didn't forget. She'd lost people before in her life, too. But Patrick was the first that was her fault.

She glanced over at Charlie, who was currently babbling on about how the movie benefited from taking out the whole Tom Bombadil subplot that existed in the book, and for the first time Sophie didn't feel stabbing guilt at the thought of Patrick. She felt sad, yes, and she felt a heavy responsibility for his fate, but now there was room to remember the time that she had with him.

And boy, had Patrick been the biggest nerd. She had no idea how many times she'd watched the Lord of the Rings with him, or Star Wars, or even movies like Back to the Future…. If she was being honest with herself, he was the reason she even had a nerdy side to her. She never would have gravitated towards that stuff as a kid if it hadn't been for him. She had always been a fan of pink and dollies and ponies and sparkly things, not that she'd ever tell Dean that.

But Patrick had pushed her out of her comfort zone. When she'd timidly expressed an interest in finding her father, he'd jumped right on board, working his computer genius madness to help her pinpoint the location of her father, who was just about as easy to track down as a puff of smoke in the wind. But he'd helped her, for hours and hours and hours.

And to show for it, he was dead.

Sophie let out a long sigh, causing Charlie to look over at her concern. "You okay?" she asked. "If you'd rather watch something else, I'm totally fine with—"

"No, no," Sophie interrupted, giving her a grin. "This movie just reminds me of someone and I was thinking of him."

"Oh," Charlie said, glancing back at the screen and, upon deciding they were at a slight lull, returning her gaze to Sophie. "Is this _him _a romantic thing?"

Sophie shook her head. "He was my best friend as a kid," she explained. "He's…he's sort of dead now. Killed."

Charlie's face fell in understanding. "Oh. I'm sorry, bitchette." She gave Sophie a long look, and then frowned. "If you want to turn it off, I get it."

"No, I like remembering him like this," Sophie said, not sure how to explain how she felt. "It's the first time in a long time that I can think about him without feeling like I'm going to throw up with guilt." Then she shot Charlie a smile. "You two would've gotten along perfectly. He was the biggest geek ever. He'd hack into the school servers and change the lunch menus so that we'd get twice the amount of dessert and half the amount of vegetables—"

"Classic," Charlie commented fondly.

"And he's the reason for all of this," Sophie said, gesturing to everything around her. "He's the reason I even found my dad." She sighed heavily, and then dissolved into silence.

Charlie gave her a little half smile, and then she reached over and grabbed the remote control before pausing the movie. "Wait here," she said quickly. Sophie watched in confusion as Charlie got up and scampered into the kitchen, and then her eyes widened slightly as the bubbly redhead returned with two glasses and bottle of whiskey in the her hands.

"Charlie, I don't know—" Sophie started, shaking her head.

"Now Sophie, don't tell me you live with the Winchesters and you've never had a little drink," Charlie teased. Then she considered. "Granted, I'm not much of a drinker myself. Sort of a lightweight. There was this one time, at Comic-Con…well, never mind."

"I don't know," Sophie said again, hesitantly. "The last time I had a drink ended…really badly."

Charlie nudged Sophie slightly. "We aren't drinking the whole bottle, bitchette. Just a little toast."

"A toast?" Sophie questioned.

"Yeah, a toast," Charlie said, sliding back into her seat beside Sophie and handing her a glass. "To Patrick. To the people you and I have both lost. To life." She glanced over her shoulder to observe the laptop that was still chugging away trying to translate the Ritual of Fire. "To being there for people when they need us to be there."

At that, Sophie relented. Without responding, she just extended the glass in her hand and waited as Charlie filled it up before also filling her own up.

"To Patrick, life, et cetera," Charlie said, clinking her glass with Sophie's.

"To Patrick, life, et cetera," Sophie repeated with a grin. She brought the glass to her lips and took a sip, nearly choking on it as it burned down her throat. She didn't think she'd ever get used to the feeling of liquor blazing its way down her throat and to her stomach.

Charlie grinned. "Now I know the Winchester Way is to just drink it straight, but just in case you're not into that, I brought us a chaser." She set a can of Coke onto the table, and Sophie immediately grabbed it and took a gulp, washing the burn out of her mouth. Charlie snorted at how quickly Sophie swallowed the Coke, like it was lifesaving water. "Alright, don't hog it."

Sophie laughed, "Fine, fine," and passed the soda to Charlie, who took it and sipped it.

Then, with mischief written all over her face, Charlie grabbed the remote and pointed it at the TV. "Now, Baby Charlie, I happen to know a pretty kickass Lord of the Rings drinking game, if you're game."

Sophie raised an eyebrow and grinned. And all she could think was that Dean was going to be _pissed_.

"I'm game."

* * *

Two hours later, Charlie and Sophie were drunk, giggling messes, Sophie much more so than the other.

"Have you ever thought about how awesome it would be to have elf ears?" Sophie babbled as she hung backwards out of her chair, her feet propped up on the seat and her back on the floor.

"Only every waking moment!" Charlie exclaimed, her face flushed.

"I've heard they have surgeries to make your ears like that," Sophie slurred. "Not that I want it. I just thought I'd tell you."

Charlie laughed. "You shouldn't have. Now next time you see me I'll totally have elf ears and it'll be marvelous."

Suddenly, Sophie's pocket vibrated and she jumped up. "Oh boy," she said, and then she pulled her phone out of her pocket and glanced at the screen. Her eyes widened. "No no _no. _It's my dad."

Charlie immediately sat up, too. "You can't answer that, you can't string two sentences together without sounding like…well, like you just played a Lord of the Rings drinking game with the most knowledgeable Tolkien fan of all time."

"But if I don't answer he'll just keep calling!" Sophie wailed overdramatically.

"Okay," Charlie drawled out slowly. She was trying to think quickly. "Okay, just answer the phone and try to shake him as quickly as possible."

"How?" Sophie asked, panicked.

"Tell him…you're tired. It's, like, midnight, that's pretty believable."

Sophie stared at the phone like it was a ticking time bomb, and then she gave Charlie one more nervous glance before flipping the phone open. "Hiya, Dad." Then she shut her eyes tightly. That was way too peppy.

"Um, hiya back, kiddo," Dean said, sounding a little amused. "How're things with Charlie back at the Batcave?"

"Things are great!" Sophie said, trying very hard to enunciate and not slur her words together. "Very good. Lots of elves." Then she hiccupped, and Charlie's hopeful face crumpled.

Dean's reply came after a moment's pause. "Are you okay?"

"Uh huh!" Sophie replied cheerily. "You know, I'm tired. Very creepy. I mean sleepy. It's daytime. Um, bedtime." She hiccupped again.

"I'll be damned," Dean's voice came through, deadpan. "You're drunk. You're actually drunk."

"No, Dad, no way, never, not a chance, I'm so so sober, _so_ sober, sober as someone super sober, the soberest—"

"Put Charlie on the phone."

"She's, ah, not here, she's playing hide and seek," Sophie said quickly, forgetting to try not to slur her words, and then she giggled.

"Great," Dean retorted, and Sophie could practically hear his eyes roll. "Sophie, put Charlie on the phone."

"It's for you," Sophie said as she handed the phone to Charlie, who shook her head and waved her hands. Sophie put the phone back to her ear. "Queen Elf doesn't wish to speak with you."

"Tell the Queen Elf she can kiss my—"

Sophie tossed the phone to Charlie, who cringed as she caught it and put the phone to her ear. "Hey, Dean."

The next words were yelled so loudly that Sophie could hear them from where she stood, even though the phone wasn't on speaker. "_You got my daughter drunk_?"

Charlie glanced at Sophie, who was standing there with a shy grin on her face, and then she said, "What can I say, Winchester, she inherited your bedroom eyes, and I just couldn't help mys—"

There was a loud, explicit exclamation from Dean that could be heard yet again by Sophie, and Charlie laughed. "Calm down, Papa Bear, I'm just kidding. We played a harmless little drinking game." There was a pause. "Uh, Lord of the Rings, what else?" Another pause. "She's sort of a lightweight, yeah, but how was I supposed to know that?" Yet another pause. "I get it, she's like two and a half pounds, I should've used common sense, but remember, I'm slightly lacking in that area and she was getting all mopey and feeling-y so I thought alcohol would help and…I'm now realizing how that was stupid, but I mean she's totally good…."

Sophie watched nervously as Charlie paced back and forth, talking to her father on the phone with a jittery, guilty urgency. Then the tech genius sighed. "Yes, I will make sure she gets to bed alright—no, Dean, I will not try to seduce your underage daughter, that's just offensive, she isn't my type—no, I'm not calling her ugly, I'm saying that any girl who is both jailbait and the daughter of Dean Winchester is not my type, because you are a scary human being, my friend, and I would not want to be on the receiving end of your pesky anger." There was a slight pause in which Charlie sighed again, and then she looked over at Sophie. "He wants to talk to you again."

"Tell him I'm not here," Sophie said, ducking behind the table.

Charlie cringed as she put the phone back to her ear. "Sophie's in the bath—" She was cut off, and then she looked at Sophie. "He said he could hear you," she said apologetically, offering her the phone.

Sighing, Sophie took it and lifted the phone to her ear. "Please don't kill me," she begged into the phone. "I'm too young to die."

Dean snorted into the phone. "Alright, lay off the drama, Jailbait," he told her. "I want you to know that you're going to be hurting in the morning."

"Nah," Sophie said, hopping up to sit on a table and missing the edge, instead falling gracelessly into the chair sitting beside it. "I'm a…a…a Chinwester, and Chinwesters don't get hangovers, never ever."

"Alright then, Sophie Chinwester," Dean said, sounding amused. "How about you call me in the morning and we talk about this some more. Or, you know what, there's no way you're even going to remember we talked. I'm going to call you in the morning, okay?"

"'Kay," Sophie said. "Hey Dad?"

"Yeah, kiddo," Dean replied with a heavy exhale, clearly expecting a bout of ridiculous babble.

"I love you," Sophie said as she picked at a loose string on her pajama bottoms. "I know you don't like using the 'L' word, and that's cool, but I thought that I would let you know that. Since there's a chance you could die soon. I just think it's important that you know when someone loves you."

There was silence on the other end, a long silence, and if Sophie hadn't been three sheets to the wind it would have been incredibly awkward. Dean began to say something back to her, but she cut him off. "Ooh, Dad, I think Charlie and I are going to make cookies now! Have a fun hunt! Thanks for not wanting to kill me!"

And then she hung up.

**Hope you guys enjoyed! Fun times ahead! Thanks to all of you for your favorites, follows, and reviews! They always keep me coming back to write more. ~ Lacey :)**


	63. Chapter 63: Good Morning, Sunshine

_Chapter 63: Good Morning, Sunshine_

When Sophie woke up the next morning, she felt like an atom bomb had just gone off in her brain.

She blinked a couple times, wondering how on earth it could possibly be so bright inside of a room that was literally in an undergroud bunker. She squeezed her eyes shut and pushed her face into her pillow, wondering if by some miracle she could go back to sleep. But it was far too late for that.

She turned over in her bed and released a loud, miserable groan. Her stomach was churning and her head was throbbing and her hair was a mess. She was so confused; there was a huge chunk of time missing from her mind from the night before.

What the hell had happened?

She sat up, rubbing her eyes painfully, and then without warning her stomach lurched. She moaned pitifully, hoping the feeling would go away, but then it came back with a vengeance. She threw the sheets off of her body and bolted out of bed, making a beeline for the bathroom, where she collapsed in front of the toilet and started puking her guts up.

What felt like an eternity later, there was a small knock on her bathroom door. Sophie turned her head just enough to see Charlie standing in the doorway to the bathroom, wearing the same clothes from the night before and an apologetic look on her face. "Morning, bitchette," she said guiltily.

"Ungh," was all Sophie could manage before her head was back in the toilet.

Charlie waited as the worst of Sophie's vomiting died down, and once Sophie was just hanging onto the edge of the toilet in exhaustion, the taller redhead stepped into the bathroom. "First hangover?" she asked sympathetically.

Sophie nodded as she caught her breath. "Why do people drink if this is what happens?" she panted.

Charlie smirked. "Eventually you learn your limits."

Sophie was going to respond, but then that bubbly acidic feeling started in her stomach again and she ducked her head back down into the toilet, retching. When she felt her stomach was empty, she looked up and glared at the girl in front of her. "You did this to me."

Charlie's smirk faltered. "It was an accident. I forgot that you're still a kid, to be honest."

"Yeah, well, when you live with Sam and Dean Winchester, you're not exactly a kid anymore. Except when it comes to alcohol tolerance, I guess," Sophie sighed, feeling the need to vomit fade away and sitting back against the wall of the bathroom. Charlie handed her a slightly damp towel, which Sophie gratefully took and used to wipe her face. The churning in her stomach had mostly passed, but her head was still pounding and everything seemed a little too bright to her. "I think…," she started, standing up slowly. "I think I'm going to shower, and then have the biggest cup of coffee in my life, and then have half a bottle of Advil."

Charlie nodded. "One cup of coffee and a boatload of drugs, coming up."

Sophie grabbed a towel down from one of the cupboards. "Better make that a whole pot, please."

Charlie grinned and then stepped out of the bathroom. Trying to ignore the pounding in her head, Sophie turned on the shower and didn't even bother to wait for it to get warm before she stripped out of her clothes and stepped in, determined to somehow wash off her hangover.

As she massaged shampoo into her hair, she tried to sort through her memories from the night before. She remembered watching movies with Charlie, and toasting to Patrick, and then everything after that was a teeny bit hazy and swirly, like she was looking at it all through a kaleidoscope.

If this was what getting drunk entailed, just a bunch of vomiting and a faulty memory, Sophie didn't see herself going down that road again in the future.

When she was done showering, she hopped out of the bathroom and quickly pulled on some yoga pants that she had never used for yoga a day in her life and an oversized white Lebanon Central cross country T-shirt. She threw her wet hair up into a bun, stuck on her reading glasses, put on the pair of slippers that she often wore around the bunker, and made her way out of her room.

Charlie was waiting in the main room, her computer out in front of her and some 80's pop song playing softly out of her headphones. She looked up when Sophie walked in. "Coffee's in the pot," she told her.

"You're a godsend," Sophie sighed. "Except for when you suggest Lord of the Rings drinking games."

"One day you'll look back on this and laugh," Charlie commented as Sophie turned to go to the kitchen.

"A day may come when the trauma from today passes, but it is not this day!" Sophie replied back in her most dramatic voice.

"That was the most pathetic attempt ever to imitate Aragorn. The great king of Gondor would be ashamed," Charlie told her matter-of-factly.

"Sorry, I can't hear your insults over the sound of my brain jackhammering against my skull," Sophie muttered to her before she shuffled her way into the kitchen and grabbed her favorite mug, dumping coffee into it. She thought about grabbing something for breakfast, too, but the thought of eating something made her stomach begin to churn again, so she promptly abandoned that idea. After locating some painkillers and quickly taking a couple, she walked back into the main room and sat down next to Charlie. "So how's the search going?"

Charlie sighed. "The search is getting narrower. Whether or not that's a good thing…we'll see."

"Why wouldn't that be a good thing?" Sophie asked.

"Well, it could just be getting narrower because the language isn't out there," Charlie sighed. "But this is the only way to find out. So... we'll just have to wait and find out."

Sophie nodded, taking a long drink from her coffee and willing her throbbing headache to go away. She was suddenly very grateful for the bunker's natural low light, thinking if the lights were any brighter she'd have to crawl away into a dark hole and not come out all day. "So…Charlie?"

"Yep?"

"What…what kind of drunk was I?" Sophie asked hesitantly. "I wasn't embarrassingly emotional, was I? Or worse, was I a total ditz?"

Charlie laughed. "Nope. You were a little goofy, but not in a wasted sorority girl way. Definitely just very funny and looser than usual. You unwound a little bit. It was actually really fun to watch. You were especially fixated on elves, which I totally respect. And then when Dean called, it was just—"

"Wait, my dad called?" Sophie exclaimed, looking at Charlie in horror. "And I _talked _to him?"

Charlie tried to rein in her laughter. "You mean you don't remember?"

"Of course I don't remember, I had, like, eighty billion shots of whiskey!" Sophie cried, green eyes wide with terror. "Oh my God, what did I say? What did _he _say?"

Charlie grinned as she remembered the previous night. "You were babbling on about elves and he accused me of getting you drunk."

"Which is true," Sophie pointed out.

"Well, yeah, but my intentions were totes harmless," Charlie retorted. Then she gave Sophie a long look. "You also told him that you loved him."

Sophie almost choked on her coffee. "What?"

"Yep," she said. "It was sort of sweet, actually."

"Sweet?" Sophie repeated. "Nothing is sweet when it comes to my dad. Do you know how many times I've heard him say the word 'love' regarding anything other than beer or frisky women? Zero times. Zilch."

"He loves you, though," Charlie said matter-of-factly. "It's the most obvious thing in the world."

"I know that," Sophie said, surprised at the assuredness in her voice when she said that. "He just doesn't say it. Ever. And I'm one hundred percent okay with that, because with him…he says everything that needs to be said in his actions, in what he does every day. So I _know _that he loves me. And…and I think he knows I love him, and I knew that one day I'd tell him that, but I didn't want to just blurt it out over the phone while I was drunk—"

"Sophie," Charlie interrupted. "Pull it together, bitchette. He's your dad, not your boyfriend. It's okay for him to know how you feel."

"Yeah, but he's so much more complicated than my boyfriend," Sophie groaned. "The man is a friggin' jigsaw puzzle. Jack is way easier to navigate."

"So have you told _Jack _that you love him yet?" Charlie asked.

Sophie groaned, bending over and resting her forehead against the table as she knotted her fingers in her hair. "This conversation is hurting my head."

"Nope, that would be last night's poor decisions."

"Stop talking, your voice is stabbing my brain."

"Well now that's just mean."

At that moment, Sophie's phone rang, and she let out an exasperated wail. Charlie smirked as Sophie checked the caller ID and practically wilted. "It's my dad."

"Yeah, he said he'd call you in the morning," Charlie said with a nod.

Sophie exhaled slowly, and then, wincing at each ring of her phone, she finally answered it. "Hey," she said into the phone.

"Good morning, sunshine!" Dean's voice boomed loudly through the phone at a much higher volume than he usually spoke. She groaned in pain and he started laughing. "How're you feeling today, my little delinquent?"

"I'm on top of the world," Sophie grumbled.

"You know what'll help with that hangover?" Dean said. "A big, heaping, greasy pork sandwich with a side of—"

"I will kill you. Without hesitation."

"I know, sweetheart," Dean laughed. "It'll pass."

"So you're not pissed?" she asked, somewhat surprised at how cheery he sounded. Dean was never cheery. Except, apparently, when his daughter was hungover.

"Nope. God knows how many times I drank too much before I was sixteen. Sammy here thinks I should be telling you not do it again, but I'm pretty sure the way you're feeling right now is warning enough."

"You got that right," Sophie muttered. "I'm never touching anything stronger than coffee ever again. But I blame Charlie."

"Between you and me, so do I. She's way sneakier than she let's on," Dean said. He paused. "So, what do you remember from last night?"

Sophie sighed. She immediately knew she didn't want to tell him that she knew about the whole 'I love you' thing. Maybe some things were best left unsaid, or at least put off. "I remember watching movies and having a couple drinks and after that it's pretty much lights out. But don't worry, Charlie was a perfect gentlewoman. Except for, you know, when we did that thing with the whip cream—"

"Sophie, God help me—"

"Just messing with you, Dad," Sophie said, cringing. "No need to raise your voice."

"I didn't."

"Are you sure?" Sophie asked weakly. "I'm pretty sure you did."

"That's just the hangover talking."

"Ugh."

Dean laughed. "Just take it easy, party animal. Drink some fluids, sleep it off…and if Charlie tries to make you a hangover cure, just tell her you'd rather die on your own terms, okay?"

Sophie couldn't help but laugh. "I'll let her know," she said. She turned around and looked for Charlie, but it looked like she'd slipped away. "Well, I'll let her know when she comes back. I think she left the room because she was afraid you'd want to talk to her."

"She should've been afraid," Dean pointed out. "She got you drunk."

"Don't make it sound so criminal. We took a drink every time Gollum said 'my precious,' of course I was going to get drunk."

"You're such a geek," Dean said fondly.

"Loud and proud," Sophie joked, and then she groaned. Now her own voice was causing her head to throb. "Listen, I think I'm going to go lie down in a dark room for the next several hours, so if we're done—" Suddenly, a loud beeping noise filled the room, and Sophie dropped the phone in surprise and yelled, "Jesus Christ, what is that ungodly sound?"

Dean's voice was coming from the phone she'd dropped, and she picked it up as Charlie bounded into the room. "Soph, what the hell?" Dean asked, annoyed.

"Sorry, Dad, there was this beeping and—Charlie, what is it?"

Charlie looked down at her computer, which appeared to be making the noise, and after a moment of staring in shock she looked up at Sophie with a grin.

"Bitchette, I think we just found our super ancient ritual language."

**Hey guys! I know this is uncharacteristically short for my chapters, but this past week has been crazy busy for me. And my schedule probably won't let up anytime soon, since I go back to school soon, so I might have to go back to just Saturday updates. I'll let you know how that's going to work soon.**

**Also, I'm glad you guys have been liking these chapters. I know they're a little filler-ish, but I feel like filler chapters are sort of important for fleshing out characters and relationships, so I don't really like to label them as filler chapters, personally. That being said, there's definitely chapters with more plot-driven substance coming up in a little while. Patience is a virtue, or so the saying goes.**

**(Insert sentence I always insert about how thankful I am for you lovely readers!) ~ Lacey :)**


	64. Chapter 64: Let's Talk About Sex

_Chapter 64: Let's Talk About Sex_

A few days later, Sam and Dean came back to the bunker to find that Charlie had left.

When they pulled up outside of the bunker, they noticed that her car was missing, and Sam turned to Dean. "Did Charlie tell us she was leaving?"

Dean shook his head. "No, and neither did Sophie."

"Maybe she just went out to grab some food," Sam offered.

Dean's eyes were slightly narrowed. "Or maybe she went out to try and find someone who speaks a specific dialect of ancient Sumerian without asking us if we even wanted her to do that," he snapped, leaning back in his seat. "She's going to get herself killed."

Sam gave Dean a look. "Let's just go in and see what Sophie says."

Dean shook his head again and got out of the Impala. "I knew we should have just sent some other hunter to go after that Vetala," he said, shutting the door as Sam got out and grabbed his duffle. "We leave for a week and Charlie gets Sophie drunk, cracks the code, and disappears without a warning."

Sam cracked a grin as they walked towards the bunker. "Okay, you've gotta admit, drunk Sophie was sort of adorable."

"Yeah, she was damn precious," Dean barked. "And we missed it because of the dumb case."

Sam snorted. "If we're lucky, we'll have plenty more chances to see her make ridiculously entertaining indiscretions in the future."

"Speak for yourself," Dean said in a tired voice. "I'm the one with less than six months to live."

Sam looked over at him before he opened the door to the bunker. "Dean, you do realize that what you just said…that's exactly why Charlie's probably out there right now, looking for someone to translate that ritual? She cares about you, and she cares about Sophie now, and…she just wants to help give you your best shot."

Dean shot him a dark look. "It's not a best shot if people I care about put themselves in danger to get it," he said in a low voice. "Now let's just go in there and see if Sophie knows anything."

Sam watched his brother in exasperation as he pushed his way into the bunker. The younger Winchester wondered how the hell he was going to survive these next six months if this was how Dean was going to keep behaving.

And then he wondered how the hell he was going to survive afterwards if somehow they failed to save him.

He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts as they made their way into the bunker. Dean stalked down the stairs, his mood dark and surly, which probably had a lot to do with the fact that they'd been unable to save all of the people the Vetala had targeted during their hunt. That, coupled with his impending doom, was weighing on him a little heavily.

He looked around for Sophie, surprised that she wasn't in the main room or amid the stacks of books or even in the kitchen. Normally she'd hear them enter the bunker and come say hi to them. Dean turned to Sam, offering a small, relatively humorless grin. "Bet she's listening to more Aerosmith when she thinks we're not around."

Sam snorted. "Another awesome moment that I didn't get to fully witness."

Dean motioned for Sam to follow him and they crept through the halls quietly, wanting to catch her mid-hair brush concert. When they got close to her door, they could definitely hear music, and for a second Dean felt victorious. Then he paid attention to the song, and he realized it was definitely not rock and roll. In fact, it was far from it. It was slow and pulsating, something resembling hip-hop or pop or something Dean would never be caught listening to. As they got to the closed door, he could make out the lyrics.

_I'm, I'm gon' ride on you baby, on you lady all night, all night. I'm gon' take care of your body, I'll be gentle, don't you scream. It's gettin' hotter, make it softer, feel your chest on top of me._

Dean looked up at Sam, clearing his throat. "What the hell?" he mouthed.

Sam returned Dean's look, eyes slightly narrowed. "Did we…did we check to see...if maybe…Jack's car was in the garage?"

Dean's eyes widened to the point that Sam thought that maybe they would actually pop out, and then suddenly they were narrowed again. "Oh, _hell _no," he growled.

Sam tried to stop him. "Dean, don't—"

But it was too late. Dean burst through the door, and stared in fury at the scene in front of him.

Sophie and Jack were in her bed, making out in a tangled mass of limbs as sexual music poisoned the air. They were both clothed, which only made Dean feel any better by the narrowest of margins, but Jack had a hand up Sophie's shirt and another on her bare waist and their legs were all twisted together and he was _on top of _her, and Dean couldn't care less about the consequences of his actions as he saw red and launched himself forward.

He heard Sophie's gasp as he wrenched Jack off of her by the back of his collar, causing him to let out a slight choking sound. Sophie sat up, a look of utter mortification on her flushed face, which quickly faded to anger as Dean sharply released Jack, who stumbled a few feet backwards. "What the hell?" she screamed. "You're not supposed to be back until tonight!"

Dean was too livid for full sentences. He whirled on Jack. "Out," he said in a low voice. Jack, seeming rightfully terrified, looked over at Sophie, as if trying to ask her permission. Dean stepped into his line of sight. "_Now_!" he barked.

"Yes, sir," Jack practically croaked, and he turned and brushed past Sam to get out of the room, not before getting a bit of a glare from the younger Winchester brother as well.

Once he was gone, Sophie quickly scrambled to straighten her shirt and tuck the loose strands of hair behind her ears, but Dean could see a hickey forming on her neck and there was no way to fix her hair completely. She glared at him. "What is your _problem_?"

Dean wanted to yell something back at her, but the music in the background kept distracting him. _I'm gon' make you feel that lovin', gettin' weak all in your knees, kiss your body from the tip-top all the way down to your feet. _In a haze of anger, he walked over and yanked the plug of her stereo out of the wall, causing the song to stop abruptly. He glared at his daughter. "What the hell kind of weird porno song is that?"

She ignored him. "Why did you just barge in here?" she cried, looking from him to Sam. "And you, too! Why doesn't anyone here knock anymore?"

Dean looked back to Sam for some kind of help, and his brother just shook his head, as if to say _this one's all yours_. Nodding curtly, Dean turned back to Sophie. "Are you two having sex?" he asked bluntly, each word tasting like acid coming out of his mouth.

Sophie's face turned tomato red. "No!" she snapped. "We were making out, that's all!"

"Sophie, so help me, if you're lying to me—"

"We're not sleeping together!" Sophie exclaimed, getting out of the bed. Dean hated seeing all of her sheets all messed up and knowing just exactly how that happened.

There was a long pause where Sophie glared at Sam and Dean, silently challenging them to say something else. They obviously didn't believe her. Sam cleared his throat, and when she looked at him she saw the uncomfortable look on his face as he prepared to ask what he felt he needed to ask.

"Soph…are you two being safe?" Sam questioned hesitantly from behind Dean, and Dean wanted to claw his brother's eyes out just for asking it.

"We. Are. Not. Having. Sex!" Sophie yelled. "I told you, it was just kissing!"

"His hand was shoved up your shirt, Soph, we're not blind!" Dean exploded, revolted just at the memory. "And that song was fifty shades of nasty for someone to just be making out to!"

For the first time, Sophie looked a little bit bashful. "Jack thought it'd be funny to make a playlist of super sexy songs and then play it really loudly on his phone whenever Jamie and Harry pass notes in class," she admitted. "And so today when we were in here just talking, he had his iPod connected to my stereo, and he accidentally started that playlist, and so we just…went with it, I guess."

Dean scoffed. "Your boyfriend _accidentally _started the playlist of baby-making music while you two were in bed. Please tell me you're not that naïve, sweetheart."

"It was an accident," she said again, this time a little less sure.

Sam was shaking his head. "So we walked in at just the right time then," he said, almost to himself. "Judging by the direction you two were headed."

Sophie shook her head, blushing. "No, no way. Jack knows I'm not…that I don't want to… Not yet, anyways…." Her face had never been redder, and Dean's eyes narrowed. This had to be the first time he'd ever seen Sophie so overwhelmed and confused that she'd actually been rendered speechless.

"You sure he knows that?" he asked carefully, the first sentence he'd uttered since walking in on her and Jack that hadn't been laced with fury.

Sophie bit her lip. "Yeah."

"You don't sound sure," Sam pointed out, looking at her with those forever concerned puppy eyes of his.

She sighed and crossed her arms. "We haven't really…talked about it. But I just…I don't…I don't think I'm ready to…but maybe…." Suddenly, she shook her head and lifted her eyes to meet Dean's. "You know what, this is none of your freaking business!" she exclaimed. "My sex life, or a lack thereof, is off limits to you two! My life, my boyfriend, my choices, end of discussion!"

Sam and Dean didn't move a muscle as Sophie brushed past them angrily, slamming the door to her room behind her as she left.

Dean turned to Sam, and for the first time in his life, Sam saw that his brother was truly in over his head. Through selling his soul to bring his brother back, getting sent to Hell, defying Michael and fighting to stop the apocalypse, taking on Leviathans and battling monsters in Purgatory, losing so many people he'd cared about and loved…there had always been a part of Dean that had been ready to tackle those challenges. It sure as hell hadn't been easy, and his life had screwed him up big time, but somehow, Dean Winchester had been built to withstand all of that.

But Dean Winchester had _not _been built to talk about sex with his daughter.

"Dude," Sam started.

"I know," Dean said, looking at his brother with a straight face. "I'll get the shotgun, you get the body bag, and then we'll make our way on over to Jack's house."

Sam gave Dean a look. "Maybe we should try taking this a little seriously, Dean."

Dean just shook his head. "No. She can't be having sex. She just…no."

Sam was conflicted. He was on the same page as Dean in the sense that he wished he could burn the image of his favorite girl in the world getting hot and heavy with her boyfriend under their roof, but he also tended to think more with his brain and less with his fist. "You weren't much older than her when you conceived her," Sam pointed out. "And I'm sure you lost it a hell of a lot earlier."

"That's besides the point," Dean grumbled.

"You're right," Sam conceded. "But I think you're missing the bigger picture."

"Bigger picture?" Dean exploded. He pointed to the bed and all of the messed up sheets. "Pretty sure the underaged disgusting-ness that we almost walked in on here is as big as this freaking picture gets!"

Sam rolled his eyes. "Dean, were you even listening to her? She sounds pretty set on _not _wanting to have sex with him. She literally had no clue that's what he was trying to start."

"Oh please," Dean scoffed. "The girl got a 1510 on her SAT without even studying for it. She's not an idiot."

Sam was getting ready to attempt to slap some sense into Dean. "Just because she's able to recite the Gettysburg Address and find the slope of a tangent line doesn't mean she has any experience in this area. Did you see how confused she was when you brought up that he was trying to push it in the direction of sex? She had no idea. None. So yeah, there is definitely a bigger picture, and that's that her boyfriend definitely wants to sleep with her, she doesn't want to sleep with him, and she has no idea how to tell him."

Dean looked at Sam like he was insane. "You got all of that from a two minute conversation that consisted mostly of her yelling at us?"

Sam shook his head. "You're an idiot."

Dean looked back at the empty bed. "So…you're saying Jack's pressuring her? Because if that's what you're saying, then I think the shotgun-body bag plan is still on the table."

Sam shrugged. "I'm saying she might be a little insecure about telling him how she feels about it. Jack's a good kid. If he knew how she feels he wouldn't do anything. But she's too unsure about everything to tell him."

Dean was shaking his head. "How the hell are you so in tune with her feelings?" Then he straightened up. "You're secretly a teenage girl trapped in a grown man's body, aren't you?" Sam just rolled his eyes. "Did you read _Twilight_? Take some estrogen pills?"

"You're doing that thing where you use crappy humor to hide the fact that there's an actual issue at hand," Sam pointed out. "I'm not _in tune _to her feelings, you're just an idiot."

Dean thought about her reaction to his accusations, how she'd looked so uncharacteristically confused and lost. And that's when he realized that what Sam said made sense. His daughter, his own flesh and blood, the girl who'd decapitated vampires and taken down a demon, the girl who'd been in the process of being tortured when he first met her, was scared of sex.

Seventy-five percent of all the thoughts he'd ever had in his life were sex-related, and his daughter was terrified of it.

He didn't know whether that made him tremendously happy or tremendously doubtful that she was related to him.

"So…what are we supposed to do?" Dean asked, lost. "Show me a werewolf trying to murder her and I'll kill the bastard dead. Show me her horny boyfriend…."

"And you want to do the same but you can't," Sam finished.

"Basically."

Sam took a deep breath. "Talk to her. She's not going to want to, but that's just because…well, you're you."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Dean shot at him, offended.

"It means you're about as sensitive as a corpse."

"Gross analogy, man."

"I'm serious," Sam said. "You got really lucky that your long lost daughter isn't naturally inclined to start a bunch of chick flick moments, so you haven't had to deal with a lot of issues with her. But this is one of those things you can't just make go away by cracking a couple jokes and stabbing it with an angel blade. So talk to her."

Dean grumbled angrily. "Let's make a deal. I try to go talk to my daughter about sex, and you make her bed look like she wasn't just one Usher song away from doing it less than fifty feet from where I sleep."

Sam cracked a grin. "Don't be a dick, okay?"

"You won't give me a shred of credit, will you?" Dean snapped, making his way to the door.

"Dude, you've never had a conversation about sex with a member of the opposite gender without it being the endgame. Of course I'm not giving you a shred of credit."

"I can do this," Dean said, mostly to himself. "I…I can do this."

Sam snorted. "Go get 'em, soldier."

"I feel sick," Dean said, motioning to his stomach with one hand as his other fell on the doorknob. "Maybe you should—"

"Dean," Sam snapped impatiently, "this conversation could make the difference in your adorable, sixteen-year-old daughter keeping or losing her virginity. Does that freak you out enough to go grow some balls and talk to her?"

Dean sucked in a sharp breath. "If I don't find you in fifteen minutes, send in the cavalry."

"_Go_."

After sending his brother one more sharp glare, Dean left Sophie's room and made his way out to the main room. He glanced around everywhere, looking for that familiar sight of strawberry blonde hair. But he didn't see her anywhere.

Suddenly, he was gripped with the fear that she'd run away again, off to North Carolina or Timbuktu or somewhere else that was far away from him. "Sophie!" he called out. "Soph, are you here!"

"I'm back here," a tiny voice called, and Dean felt relief wash through him as his head turned in the direction of Sophie's voice. He followed her voice until he found her tucked back amid the stacks of books in the bunker.

He should've known she'd be there. It was her favorite nook in the entire bunker, a little alcove wedged between two tall bookshelves that indented slightly into the wall. She'd made it her little reading alcove, complete with pillows and a soft brown blanket. There were a few stacks of books on the ground, books on the supernatural world that Sophie had slowly been making her way through in between her reading assignments for school.

She was sitting in her nook, surrounded by pillows, her blanket thrown across her lap. A book rested in her hands, but she hadn't even opened it. She was too busy staring at the wall.

"Hey," Dean said. When she didn't reply, he sat down next to her, keeping his eyes on her at all times. "You know we need to talk."

"I know," she said quietly.

"And you know I'm going to hate this way more than you are."

Reluctantly, she gave a tiny grin, still not making eye contact with him. "I know."

Dean looked at her, and he could see how vulnerable she felt, how insecure she was. "You know, you're so damn beautiful. I'm kind of amazed it's taken this long for us to have this problem."

"Dad, c'mon—"

"I mean, I can't take all the credit for that, your mother was something else when it came to looks. Did you know she was the very first and one of the incredibly few women that I ever thought was out of my league?"

Sophie looked up, intrigued. "Really?"

Dean sat back, remembering. "Oh yeah. I remember seeing her for the first time at the police station. She was waiting for her dad to get off from work and I was shadowing my dad, giving him a bit of help on the case. And she was just sitting there, red hair in a ponytail, reading the newspaper, and I…well, it's embarrassing to admit this, but I got butterflies."

Sophie's smirked. "Dean Winchester doesn't get butterflies."

"Oh, but he did," Dean admitted, grinning as he thought back. He took a deep breath, dispelling the memories. "Listen, Soph, I want you to know I like Jack—"

She looked up sharply. "Please, Dad, let's just not do this," she begged.

Dean shook his head and continued. "I like him, I do. But the fact is, he's a teenage boy. He has…desires."

"I think I'm gonna be sick," Sophie said, hiding her head under the blanket.

Dean grinned at the slightly Sophie-shaped lump hiding beneath the brown throw. "If you don't want to sleep with him…you need to tell him. So he knows not to push you. Because right now, he's pushing you, and if he pushes you anymore, I'm going to chop off his dick."

She made a noise from under her blanket. "How do you know I don't want to sleep with him?" she challenged.

Her question hit Dean's gut painfully. "I guess I don't know that," he admitted. "But judging by how you reacted earlier, I'd say you don't."

It was very quiet underneath Sophie's blanket for a while. Then she said, "You were able to read me that well?"

"Well, no," Dean admitted. "Sam did. But still."

Dean heard a long sigh. "I don't want to sleep with Jack," she admitted. "I really really like him, but…."

"But what?" Dean prodded, after she'd trailed off into a heavy silence.

"I just…the closest I've ever come to any of that was…was that night when, um…well, that night with Ryan," she mumbled uncomfortably, and immediately Dean felt the familiar, overwhelming feeling of heartache and anger that he felt whenever that whole thing was brought up. "Don't think too hard about that, Dad," Sophie said quickly, knowing exactly how the mentioning of Ryan made Dean feel. "He didn't really do anything—"

"Sophie, you don't need to sugarcoat it, I know—"

She continued as if he hadn't spoken. "But that night's still just…I don't know, it hasn't completely gone away yet in my mind." There was a long pause, and then he heard a sniffle from beneath the blanket. "What's wrong with me?" Sophie asked, and something in her voice made it very clear to Dean that she had started to cry. "Jack is perfect. He's hot and he's sweet and he's smart and he's funny and he's understanding and I can't…I can't…."

Dean immediately put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her against him. He used his other hand to slowly pull the blanket back from Sophie's head, revealing his daughter's watery eyes and quivering lip. At the sight, he wrapped both arms around her in a hug and placed his chin on top of her head, holding her as she shook with tears she didn't want to spill.

"First thing's first. Nothing is wrong with you," Dean said in a stern voice. "Not one damn thing. You got that?"

He felt Sophie nod into his shoulder as she sniffled again.

"Sometimes life just hits you where it hurts and it takes a while to recover. What happened with Ryan was only six months ago. You're not going to be one hundred percent right off the bat."

"It's not right off the bat though," she said softly. "You said it yourself, it's been six months."

"Yeah, six months of monster hunting and dealing with me and Sam and getting a guardian angel and learning about Beelzebub," Dean reasoned. "It's not like you've been given a lot of time to deal with it."

Sophie breathed in a shaky breath. She was quiet for a long time, and Dean let her just stay like that, breathing slowly against him, letting him be there for her. Then, she quietly asked, "What if it was you?"

"What do you mean?" Dean asked.

"If you were Jack," she said. "If you were Jack and your girlfriend wouldn't sleep with you. How would you feel?"

Dean considered her words and knew he needed to pick his carefully. "Well first of all, I've never exactly been the relationship type. So that's not a fair question."

"No, you're wrong," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "I know you like to hide all that commitment and affection behind that obnoxious playboy wall, but you're not just the relationship type, you _live_ for real relationships. You've given up everything for Sam and for Cas, and even for Charlie. And I know there are people in your past that you've loved a lot, too. So stop trying to avoid my question and just answer it honestly."

Dean took a deep breath. His daughter was too damn sharp for him. And too sweet. Too innocent. Too perfect. What the hell had he done to deserve that?

Regardless, he thought about her question. "If I were in Jack's position," he started slowly, "I would be frustrated because I would think that maybe, this girl just isn't quite as into me as I am into her. But maybe if she communicated with me, and told me that it wasn't a lack of feelings but that she just wasn't ready…then maybe I could understand that."

She sighed. "But what if he doesn't understand?" she asked fearfully.

"Then he's a worthless douchebag," Dean said matter-of-factly, "and he's gonna have to move to some obscure Tibetan monastery a couple thousand miles away from here to save himself from getting his neck snapped by me."

He felt a part of his heart soar when she let out a reluctant laugh. "Tibetan monastery?"

"He'll have to shave his head and wear robes and everything." She laughed again, wiping the remainder of her tears away with the back of her hand. "But Soph, Jack's one of the good ones. He's not going to care if you want to wait."

She nodded. "You're probably right."

Dean straightened up. "Hello, you're talking to me. Of course I'm right."

She sat up, too, looking up at him with those innocent green eyes. "So…we don't have to have the _actual _sex talk right now, right?"

Dean made a disgusted face. "I'm still hoping we'll _never _have to have that talk."

"Fair enough," Sophie said, grinning at him. She sniffed one more time, and then she groaned. "Well, now I guess I need to talk to Jack."

"Nope. First you need to tell me where the hell Charlie is."

Sophie raised an eyebrow. "She didn't tell you guys she was leaving?"

Dean shook his head. "Probably because she knew we would've told her not to. Did she say where she was going?"

"I don't know, she wouldn't tell me when she left," Sophie said, folding her blanket up and pushing her pillows back where they usually went. "My guess? Iraq or somewhere like that. Modern day Mesopotamia. Somewhere that she can find a translator for the language."

Dean threw his hands up in the air. "Great. We sent the most American looking girl in the world into the most volatile region in the world."

"Actually, North Korea is the most volatile region in the world," Sophie pointed out.

"Could you not be a know-it-all for, like, five seconds?" Dean asked.

"Hey, don't be mean, I'm very sensitive right now."

Dean rolled his eyes just as Sam appeared in between the stacks of books. He looked down at Sophie and Dean, sitting down amid a pile of pillows and books and leaning against each other like it was the most natural thing. He gave a hopeful grin. "So I guess you guys talked it out?"

"Yep," Sophie said, looking up at Sam with a smirk. "Dad said I could have all the sex I want with whoever I want, even creepy old dudes, as long as we do it to Led Zeppelin."

Sam looked slightly stricken, and Dean moved away from her. "Hey! No! I did not say that!"

Sophie laughed and then gave Sam a less patronizing grin. "I'm kidding, obviously. We talked it all out, Sam. I'm good. We're good."

Sam nodded, still a little miffed by her joke. "Good."

With another small smirk, she stood up. "Okay. Well, if we're done here, I need to pack."

At that, both Winchester brothers turned their heads sharply in her direction. Dean stood up from the ground so that he could look down at her in an intimidating manner. "Pack? For what?"

"Didn't I tell you?" Sophie asked, looking back and forth between Sam and Dean in confusion. "I'm pretty sure I told you."

"Told us what?" Sam asked, crossing his arms.

"I must've forgotten," she continued to herself, picking up two books from one of the stacks on the ground and tucking them under her arm, "what with you two leaving me with Charlie for a week. Not that I'm complaining. But—"

"Told. Us. What?" Dean repeated.

"Well, you know how this weekend is that Holly Ball fundraiser?"

Dean scowled. "Yeah, thanks for reminding me."

"Well," Sophie started slowly, "the cross country team's district tournament got moved up to this weekend. And it's kind of in Manhattan, Kansas, which is a couple hours away, so the team's getting hotel rooms and stuff and we're going to stay the night. So I kind of have to miss the ball."

Dean was already shaking his head. "No. No way. You're not going."

"It's going to be fine, Dad," Sophie said. "You and Sam will go to the Holly Ball, I'll go run a few miles in forty-five degree weather, and we'll rendezvous in front of an episode of Dr. Sexy, M.D. on Sunday. Everyone's happy."

Dean gave Sophie a stern look. "Okay, first of all, Dr. Sexy, M.D. doesn't make me happy, it's just a half-decent show, okay? And this isn't about the Holly Ball, although I'm still pissed about that. This is about you going off alone. Which is a huge no-no."

Sophie heaved a big breath. "I won't be alone. I'll have Remy. Remember him? My powerful guardian angel who can tell if I'm in danger before it even happens?"

"As long as danger isn't a near-fatal car crash," Dean said sarcastically.

"That was an accident, Dad," Sophie sighed. "If that's what you're afraid of, then keep me home because you're afraid I'll trip on a root and break my neck, not because you're afraid a horde of demons will come and murder me or something. Because Remy's…well, he's a lot of things, but he would risk everything to try and save my life and you know that."

Dean exchanged a look with Sam. They were quiet for a long moment. "How many nights would you be there?" he finally asked.

"Two," Sophie said. "Friday and Saturday."

"And you'd be rooming with girls, right?" Dean asked.

Sophie rolled her eyes. "Yes. The room will be Y-chromosome free."

Dean looked at her, considering the proposal for a moment. Then he looked over at Sam, who just shrugged. Sophie could tell he conceded when he let out a long breath. "If you're going to stress me out this much you better win this damn race."

"Aye aye, captain," she replied with a grin. She gave him a quick hug that he could barely react to before doing the same to Sam. "Well, I gotta start packing!"

As she started walking away, Dean turned and called after her, "And you better get me a meeting with your hot cross country coach, too!"

"She's married!" Sophie called over her shoulder.

Dean just shrugged and raised his eyebrows suggestively at Sam. "Doesn't mean she wouldn't want a piece of this."

"She's married to a woman!" Sophie yelled from down the hall, right before they heard the door to her bedroom close.

Sam laughed and Dean huffed angrily. "Dude, if today has taught me anything, it's that it's been _way _too long since I got laid."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Why don't we worry about this Holly Ball thing first, and then you can bitch about your tragically crappy sex life as much as you want. To a brick wall."

Dean shook his head. "Can we call in sick to volunteering? Is that allowed?"

"Nope."

Dean looked annoyed for a minute, and then, after a moment, his eyes brightened. With a slightly smug grin, he pulled out his phone.

Sam looked at him in confusion. "Who are you calling?"

Dean started to dial a number. "If we're going to do this Holly Ball thing, I might as well get some amusement out of it."

Now Sam was worried. "Dean, what are you doing?"

Dean didn't answer him, instead lifting the phone to his ear and waiting for it to be picked up. When it did, he looked over at Sam with a mischievous grin.

"Hey, Cas, buddy, how's it going…."

**Hey guys! This chapter was especially long to make up for Wednesday's especially short chapter! Hope it was entertaining :)**

**Also, I've done some thinking, and I'm going to have to fall back to just Saturday updates. With school rapidly approaching, along with both a job and an internship (I know, clearly I didn't really think this through...), I'm going to be running very low on writing time. But I really love writing this story, so I'm going to do my best to sit down and type it all out as much as I humanly can.**

**Thanks for sticking with me, amigos! ~ Lacey :)**


	65. Chapter 65: Easy To Love

_Chapter 65: Easy To Love_

Sam, Dean, and Cas stood in front of the entrance to the gym at Sophie's school, staring at the door, unwilling to go in.

Cas was the first to speak. "I thought you said you needed me to help you face mortal peril."

Dean turned to look at Cas. "Dude. We're about to walk into a high school, willingly and unarmed. That is the very definition of mortal peril."

Cas looked only mildly annoyed. After years of knowing Dean Winchester, he expected nothing less. "Were you not listening the last time I spoke with you and told you things are very, very bad in Heaven? And that I am very busy? Very, very busy?"

"I figured you needed a vacation," Dean said, looking at the slow influx of parents making their way into the gym.

"You're lucky you caught me on a rare slow day." Then Cas looked over at Sam. "Where did you say Sophie was again?"

"Cross country meet," Sam said, the only one looked even remotely at ease. "They drove over there this afternoon and they race in the morning. And then I think if they do well they race one more time Sunday morning."

"Very clever of her, to find a way to avoid this mortal peril."

Dean snorted. "She bailed on us to go voluntarily sprint for extended periods of time, Cas. She's in mortal peril, too."

"No, you're just exceedingly out of shape," Cas pointed out.

"Tell that to my rock hard abs," Dean shot back, annoyed.

"Yes, well, you got very genetically lucky," Cas admitted. "And not that I make it my business to pay attention to your physique, but would you _really _call your abdomen rock hard? Because over the past few years I would say that—"

"Don't say whatever it is you're about to say if you want to keep your body free of angel blade holes, _comprende_?"

"Okay, you're just stalling, Dean," Sam said, cutting them off. "Are we going in or not?"

Dean considered. "Or not," he finally decided, and then he turned around to walk back to the Impala.

Sam grabbed his shoulder. "Don't be a bigger diva than you usually are. Let's just go in there and get this whole damn thing over with."

Dean produced the best bitch face that he could. "Fine. Let's go."

The two men and the angel walked wordlessly into the gymnasium, where setup had already begun. Lights had been strung all over the place, and parents and students were hustling and bustling back and forth, setting up tables and chairs and food stations and dance floors and decorations. Dean made a gagging sound. "Hell was easier than this," he proclaimed.

To their left, Dean heard someone clear their throat. "Are you three here to help set up?"

Dean looked over, and when he saw who the voice belonged to, he immediately transformed from irritated and entitled to slick and charming. A woman sat at a table with a laptop in front of her, and boy, was she beautiful. Wavy brown hair cut off at her shoulders, ocean eyes tucked behind adorable glasses. With a quick downward glance Dean could see that she wore sexy heels and a knee length pencil skirt below her fitted light blue pinstriped collared shirt. "Yes, ma'am," he said, his voice instantly changing to the tone he only used with beautiful women, and Sam rolled his eyes to Dean's left.

The woman, however, looked oblivious. "Names?" she asked.

Dean willed her to be into him. "I'm Dean Winchester. And that's Sam and, uh, Cas."

At that, the woman looked up, eyes wide. "Did you say Winchester?" she asked in surprise.

"Oh, so you've heard of me," Dean said with another grin. Beside him, Sam did his very best to avoid another eye roll.

"I've heard of your daughter. Sophie, isn't it?"

Dean was getting annoyed. Clearly this was slipping away from potential hook-up territory. "That's my girl, yeah."

The woman sat back, arms crossed, observing him closely and tapping her French manicured fingernails on her arms. "Allow me to introduce myself," she said in a cool tone. "I'm Angela. My daughter is April Levin."

Immediately Dean straightened up as if the woman's stare had burned him alive, and Sam halfway succeeded in holding in a snort of laughter. Dean looked at the woman in incredulity. "You're the mother of the Perpetual Tear Producer that got my daughter suspended?" he asked.

Angela's eyes narrowed. "And you're the father of the girl who made my daughter sit out the first round of tournament play for regionals."

Dean shook his head and gave his brother a look. "And here I thought I was going to break my dry spell," he mumbled low enough so only Sam could hear.

Angela kept glaring at them for a few more moments, but then she just sighed heavily, her body slouching slightly in defeat. "Who am I kidding? My daughter's sort of a terror. I know that."

Dean looked over at Sam, partly in confusion and partly in surprise, and then he turned back to the woman. "Did you just call your kid a terror?"

Angela sighed again. "Yeah, well, her father's got a lot of old buddies down at the courthouse, and so he called in a few favors and got them to rule that she would live with him after the divorce, so no wonder she turned out like she did. Honestly I took this whole volunteering position thing to try and actually be close to her for an evening, but she just nabbed my keys and took my car to go hang out with Candice, whose parents let her drink their liquor." She rubbed her head in exhaustion, and then looked back up at Sam, Dean, and Cas. "I'm sorry, I'm babbling. Bottom line, I'm sure your daughter is a perfectly fine young woman. And even though I sure as hell don't speak for him, I'm sorry for the Hollywood-level production my ex-husband probably put on when he found out about Sophie and April's fight."

"Yeah, sorry honey, your ex is a douche," Dean said.

Angela cracked a grin. "Why do you think he's my ex?" she replied. She straightened back up in her chair. "Well, let me sign you guys in and then direct you to where you're going to be helping out. Dean and Sam and…Cas? There's no Cas sighed up to volunteer."

Dean looked over at Cas, who was staring up at the lights strung to the ceiling in mild bewilderment. "He's, uh, kind of a family friend," Dean said, trying to give her one of those looks that usually made women cave in to his requests. "I told him he could tag along."

Angela's head tilted slightly to the side. "Family fr…oh, wait, are you two together?"

Dean looked at Sam in disbelief and then back at Angela. "Not a snowball's chance in hell, honey."

"So then you and Sam?"

"We're _brothers_!" Dean exclaimed in exasperation. "Why the hell does this always happen to me? Why doesn't anyone ever think Sam and Cas are the ones getting it on?"

Angela gave him an apologetic look. "Sorry. My brother recently came out after divorcing wife number three and my gaydar's been completely haywire since then."

For the first time, Cas spoke up. He looked at Angela in mild interest. "I would not blame your completely fictional 'gaydar' on your misconception. For some reason many people make the same mistake. Usually it's quite comical, but in this particular instance, when Dean clearly finds you very sexually appealing, it's primarily awkward."

And with three sentences, Dean immediately knew Cas had effectively squashed what little chance had remained of him getting laid that night.

Angela, who was blushing by this point, ducked her head down to glance at the computer screen. "Well, um," she started, clearing her throat, "you're on dance floor duty. The idiots over there now have never done heavy lifting a day in their lives. Although…," she said, with an appreciative cursory glance at Dean, "it looks like you know a thing or two about heavy lifting."

And with three sentences, Dean felt his chance at getting laid come back to life.

"I do indeed, so glad you noticed," he said smoothly, trying to smile at her in a way that said 'I'm not sleeping with either of the men standing next to me and I really wouldn't mind sleeping with you,' but then Sam grabbed his shoulder and pulled him away.

"Thank you very much, Angela," Sam said quickly, "but we'll be going now."

As Sam pulled him away and Cas followed them, Dean glared at his brother. "Dude. What the hell? That was my chance."

"You're not going to sleep with the mother of the girl Sophie's fighting with at school," Sam said plainly. "That's literally the worst idea you've had in months."

"No it's not," Dean said, somewhat childishly.

"Yes," Sam said. "It is."

"No," Dean retorted in the same tone Sam had used. "It's not."

Sam shot him an annoyed glare. "How the hell could your mind possibly tell you that this is a good idea?"

Dean glanced over his shoulder, and then he smirked at Sam. "Because she's smoking."

Cas stepped in between them, looking irked. "You two pulled me out of a very literal civil war in Heaven so that I could listen to you bicker about the woman Dean wants to fornicate with tonight?"

Dean gave Cas a look. "I thought we were out of the phase where you use words like 'fornicate'."

Cas just shook his head, looking back up at the lights strung around the gym. "I don't understand the concept of the event that we're trying to set up for," he said, glancing at all of the activity around him. "People pay a lot of money to wear inordinately expensive clothing and come to this place of terrible odors and then they drink and dance with people they likely aren't even friends with."

"Well it's a fundraiser for parents," Sam explained. "So it's supposed to raise money for the school. It's just an excuse for parents to try and get something fun out of dumping their money into the school."

"Well it seems ridiculous to me. They should just give the school their money and then spend their time doing something they actually want to do," Cas said, eyeing a group of women laughing loudly as they set tables. "I'm certain all those women would rather be drinking a glass of rosé and watching a soap opera."

Sam gave Cas an incredulous look. "Cas, how do you even know what a soap opera is?" He thought for a moment. "Or rosé?"

Cas looked offended. "If you're implying that it is for some reason emasculating for a male to enjoy a glass of pink wine, then quite frankly, Sam, I find you sexist."

"See, this is why I brought him along. Cas understands how dumb this is," Dean said brightly. "Although, man, we need to find you a different go-to alcoholic beverage. Something nice and brown." He clapped his hands together. "Now let's go set up the dance floors so I can get back to chatting with Angela."

"You're unbelievable," Sam said. "Really, you are. Don't you think you're old enough to start thinking with your upstairs brain?"

"Yeah, says the guy who hasn't gotten laid in twice as long as I have," Dean pointed out. "And believe me, that is pathetic."

Sam just made an annoyed sound and shook his head, walking away and offering to help out one of the men with a section of the dance floor they were trying to set up.

Dean looked over at Cas. "And what about you, huh? When's the last time you got some angel action?"

Cas gave Dean a peeved look. "I think I'll go assist Sam."

And with that, Dean was alone.

He heaved a big breath. He entertained the thought of maybe, possibly assisting Sam and Cas in their attempts to help what looked like three dads in their mid-fifties set up a dance floor, when he heard the sound of a whispered argument behind him.

"That's gotta be him, she said he was the shorter one," what sounded like a boy's voice said.

"Well, yeah, but there's three. She didn't mention three of them," a girl responded in a hushed tone.

"The dude with the black hair has to be some sort of uncle or family friend, judging by what she's told us," the boy said. "This guy's gotta be it. See if you can get a better look at—"

Dean finally turned around. "I can hear you," he said in annoyance, looking around, his eyes landing on two teens that were trying to pose as putting decorations on tables. Right off the bat, he could tell that the girl was Jamie Williams, judging by the fact that besides the fact that she was a girl, she looked exactly like Jack. And if this was Jamie, then the tall, muscular boy besides her had to be Harry.

They both looked shocked that he'd addressed them, and Harry was the first to speak. "Um, sorry," he said, looking apologetic. "Would you happen to be Dean Winchester?"

Dean nodded. "Yeah, I am. You're Sophie's friends, right? Jamie and Harry?"

They both nodded, relaxing a little. "Sorry for the whispering," Jamie said, looking shy. "We just, uh, weren't exactly sure if it was you."

Dean shrugged. "Don't sweat it. I guess Sam and I are kind of urban legends at this point. We don't really come to stuff like this."

Jamie grinned. "I told Sophie she has it lucky. Having your parents never come to stuff like this is way better than having them show up for every single school function." She pointed towards a married couple working on setting up the stage where the live band was going to be performing. Dean grinned as the woman talked to a group of other moms while the man worked on the stage. It was about as apple pie of a life as he'd ever seen.

He turned back to the kids. "Soph talks about you guys all the time. I'm glad she found some friends here."

Harry nodded. "Yeah, well honestly, we're just lucky she befriended us first. She's the nicest, most fun to be around person at school. Everyone wants to be friends with her. Except anyone who has a crazy, out of control crush on Remy Angel. Like April Levin."

Jamie hit his shoulder and glared at him. "God, Harry, don't bring that up now."

Dean smirked. "It's fine. I know all about that. But I'm glad she has a good time at school. God knows I never did."

Jamie looked at Harry and smiled. "Seriously, she's everyone's favorite. Teachers love her, students love her…. I don't know, I just figured I'd tell you that, since I'm sure she'll never say that to you. But Sophie's great."

Dean was starting to realize that Sophie had made some truly good friends, and that maybe, he shouldn't have been so reluctant to be a part of her life outside of the one they lived in the bunker. Maybe, just maybe, helping out at this stupid fundraiser wasn't so bad after all. Not when it was for her. "Yeah, she is, isn't she," he said, grinning a little it. "Well, hey, it was great to meet you two, but…I sort of promised my brother over there that I would actually help out a little tonight, so I should probably go do that."

They both nodded. "It was nice to meet you, too," Harry said.

"Definitely," Jamie agreed.

Dean gave them a parting grin and then turned around to go find Sam and Cas. He saw them lifting a section of the dance floor and moving it so that it lined up with the correct conjoining piece, and he was about to go suck it up and earn his volunteer hours when he heard the sound of heels clacking on the floor behind him.

He turned just as Angela walked up to him, and he grinned. "Not manning the sign-in table anymore?" he asked.

She nodded, taking her glasses off and hanging them down the center of her collared shirt, pulling the article of clothing down just enough for Dean to see a very appealing amount of cleavage. "Shift change," she said, watching as Dean's eyes traveled south from hers. She glanced over at Sam and Cas, who were in the middle of a mild argument about where their section of the dance floor was supposed to go. "Listen," she said. "I know a back way out of here if you were interested in ditching."

One of Dean's eyebrows lifted, and he looked back at Sam and Cas. He felt guilty for about two seconds, and then he gave her his most winning smile.

"What are we waiting for?"

* * *

It was midnight before the big race, and Sophie still couldn't fall asleep.

Her three roommates in her hotel room, two sophomores and a fellow junior girl whom she'd grown quite close to over the past semester, were already asleep, seeing as they had to wake up at six A.M. to get ready for the race. But Sophie couldn't fall asleep. She was too busy thinking about everything going on in her life.

It was early December. Which meant that in a few short months, her dad was out of time, and he'd be dead or worse.

She felt so selfish, pushing him to let her come to this dumb race when her time with him was so limited.

She shook her head into the pillows. No, it wasn't selfish. She needed to live life and have hope that Charlie would find someone to translate the Ritual of Fire. After all, now that they had a language, there had to be someone on the planet somewhere who knew it and could decipher it. She needed to have hope. Because without hope, she knew she was going to spend more than a couple nights staying up late worrying herself into insanity.

She let out a tiny sigh, rolling over in the bed again to try and find a comfortable position. She heard Annabel, the junior she was sharing a bed with, mumble softly under her breath in her sleep. It sounded something like "teddy bear pudding." It made Sophie grin, but after a moment she felt a small cloud of sadness descend upon her. She never had fun dreams anymore. It wasn't like her sleep was always plagued with nightmares or anything, but whenever she did dream, it usually involved hunting or Sam or Dean or Remy or Jack, and they were rarely the type of dreams that would fall under the same file as _teddy bear pudding_.

One look at the clock told her it was already a quarter past midnight, and she was no closer to falling asleep. She wanted more than anything for her brain to just shut down so that she could finally get some rest and kick some butt in the morning.

Just as the thought entered her mind, there was a soft fluttering of wings, and then suddenly a familiar hushed voice filled the dark. "Victoria's Secret pajama shorts? How 2006 of you."

Sophie bolted up in bed, and as her eyes adjusted to the dark she could make out a tall outline of a boy. "Remy?" she half whispered, half yelled. "What the…. Get out of here, the girls will wake up!"

She saw a flash of a smile, even in the dark. "One lonely angel boy and four unsuspecting human girls. Sounds exciting."

"You're disgusting," Sophie snapped. "Seriously, get out, they can't see you here!"

"Relax," she heard him say, and then suddenly the lights in the room flipped on and Sophie squinted as the brightness hit her eyes, pulling the covers that weren't claimed by Annabel as much as she could around her torso. "I took care of it. They won't wake up while I'm here."

Sophie glared at him. "Did you drug my teammates?"

"Hey, they're my teammates, too," Remy replied, offended.

Sophie took him in. He was wearing a dark grey T-shirt and navy blue plaid pajama pants. She was about to ask him about the attire, but then she remembered that he was here, rooming with three other high school boys. He was, after all, on the team. Sophie still had a bit of a hard time seeing Remy as just a high school student, since she tried so hard to avoid him at school, but she had to remind herself that during all that time that she spent avoiding him, he was hanging out with people and forging at least tiny friendships.

Or whatever it was angels had with humans.

"And I didn't drug them," Remy continued with a smirk that reached his green-grey eyes. Sophie just stared at him, unconvinced. "I just gave them very peaceful, restful dreams so that I could talk to you."

"Well, you still shouldn't have just appeared out of nowhere. What if I slept naked, huh?" Sophie asked, still annoyed at him.

Remy just eyed her oversized pink T-shirt. "Something tells me you've never slept naked in your life. But, you know, if you want the first time you sleep commando to be in a bed with another girl, then by all means—"

"You're gross. Seriously, are you sure you're mentally connected to me and not my dad?"

Remy grinned, and then after a moment his grin fell. "So you can't sleep."

Sophie knew it wasn't a question. She tried to come up with something to say to him to explain it away, like having too much coffee or experiencing pre-race jitters, but she knew he'd know she was lying. So she just nodded.

He sat down on the bed next to her and crossed his arms. "Why?"

Sophie frowned. "I don't really want to talk about my feelings right now, Remy. Can't you just poof me to sleep like you did to Annabel, Sarah, and Gina?"

It was his turn to frown. "Sure, I could. But then tomorrow night you'd have the same problem. And then the next night. And then the next night. And it won't get any better."

"And what? If I spill my guts to you my problems will just go away?" Sophie shot at him.

"No," Remy admitted. "But maybe if you stop shoving every piece of emotion that you feel down like your dad, you'll actually have some room to breathe."

She stared at him and then looked down at her lap. "Why do you even care?" she muttered.

"That's a dumb question."

She sighed. "I know."

The silence between them was so heavy, to the point where Sophie felt herself almost start to blush. She knew he wasn't going to say a word until she started talking, and so eventually she just took a deep breath.

"I guess… I'm just really scared," she admitted, not daring to make eye contact with Remy for fear of losing her cool. "I don't want to lose my dad, you know? And there's only a few more months left. And I just feel like…like I can't do anything to help. I'm just…going to school and getting caught making out with my boyfriend and going to freaking cross country meets and _not _helping save my dad's soul from an evil demon."

Remy was quiet for a second, and then he said, "You got caught making out with Jack?"

Sophie looked up at Remy with so much fury that she was surprised to feel angry tears sting at her eyes. "You _beg _me to open up about my feelings and then you single out _that _comment? Really?"

For the first time, she saw regret in his eyes. "You're right. I'm sorry. That was out of line."

"You think?"

"Really," he said, staring straight into her eyes. Sophie realized that his face had neared hers, as if physical proximity would make her take him more seriously. "I'm sorry."

She tried not to gulp and just nodded. He pulled away from her slightly, and she realized that underneath the blankets, her hands were slightly shaking. She grabbed tightly to the bottom her of pajama shorts to try and still them. "So yeah," she said quickly. "Life's just kind of sucky right now."

Remy looked thoughtful. "You think you can't do anything to help," he finally said. "But you can. And you are."

Sophie looked at him like he was crazy. "Are you kidding me? Did you not just hear me tell you I'm literally just sitting on my ass twiddling my thumbs while all the grown-ups try and fail to figure this out?"

Remy cracked a grin. "I'm about to tell you something that might come as a huge shock to you, Ace, so listen carefully, and don't get a big head about it."

She brought her hands up and crossed them over her chest. "I'm listening."

"You are probably the most easy to love human that has ever walked across the planet Earth," he said, point blank. "You are witty, and charming, and kind, and beautiful. Anyone with a speck of warmth in their soul is drawn to you because you are special. You are intrinsically good." At this point, her heart was hammering in her chest, and she wondered where this could possibly be going until he kept talking. "And Dean Winchester is no exception. He loves you with every part of his heart and soul. He would do anything to keep you from pain. And he knows how much losing him would hurt you, and he doesn't want to die knowing he could miss out on even more of your life. You are the reason he is going to find a way out of this. Just by existing, you're doing something."

She took a few moments to absorb what he said. "That makes no sense," she finally said. "By doing nothing, I'm doing something?"

"You're not doing _nothing_," Remy tried to explain. "Look, I'd never personally met the Winchesters before I became your guardian, but trust me, I knew about them. They're pretty freaking famous in Heaven. And I've known Castiel for a long while, and he's told me about them. And from what I've seen and heard, before you, Dean barely ever tried to save himself from imminent death and destruction because he never thought he was worth it. But you…you make him feel like he's worth it. So he's going to win this one. He just is."

At his words, Sophie felt a huge release of tension inside of her body, like she had been in something's viselike grip and they had finally let go. She cocked her head slightly to the side and gave Remy an accusatory glance. "Did you just work angel mojo on me to calm down?"

This time, he didn't smirk or sneer at her. He just grinned. "No, Ace. That would be your body finally understanding that you don't need to be stressing out so much. You're a little late to the show, but just as a little spoiler alert…the Winchesters always win."

She cracked a grin. "I can't believe I'm saying this… but thank you for creepily popping into my room in the middle of the night to talk to me. That was a pep talk that actually kind of worked."

"Anytime." Then he gave her a wink. "Seriously. Anytime. Especially if you ever decide to try out that whole sleeping naked thing."

She rolled her eyes. "And now you ruined the moment."

He snorted and stood up. "How about I make up for it with a parting gift?" he offered, going over to turn off the lights.

Sophie looked around in the dark, trying to make out Remy's figure but failing as her eyes tried to readjust to the darkness. "What's that?"

Suddenly, she felt his hand gently brush her cheek and she froze, her heart pounding so loudly in her chest she was afraid she'd wake up her dead-to-the-world roommates. "Sleep," he answered softly, and then his hand trailed up her hairline to her forehead, where two fingers pressed gently into her skin.

She felt warmth trickle down through her body, and then she slipped into a deep, restful sleep.

**Guys. A week feels just too long in between updates. Unfortunately, that's how it has to be for right now. But I just thought you should know that it pains me. **

**Also, just as a heads up, some real sh!t starts to go down next chapter. Just a little incentive to tune in next Saturday ;)**

**Have a fabulous day, my friends. Hit me up with a review if you feel so inclined. Or don't. It's a free country, for the most part ~ Lacey :)**


	66. Chapter 66: What Awaits In The Woods

**Surprise! I managed to get this short chapter done, and while it's not very long, it ****_is _****complete, and I figured you guys might want a little something before Saturday. So without further ado...**

_Chapter 66: What Awaits In The Woods_

The next morning, when Dean woke up, he felt a tiny seedling of regret.

Not for the sex. Because what he and Angela had been doing all night…that was the stuff of seasoned pros. It was like they had both been reading the same scripts their whole lives, and they never even had to rehearse before the real thing. He drove them to her home, they had a couple shots of a half-filled bottle of tequila hidden behind three cans of corn in her cupboard ("If April ever found this, it'd be gone in a night"), and then she had led him to her room, discarding clothes all along the way, and they'd fallen into bed, practically already tangled together before they hit the mattress. It had been so effortless and easy that it almost was too good to be true.

But it wasn't. For once, something in Dean's life wasn't more complicated than it should've been. It was just a really great night of no strings attached sex. Nothing more, nothing less.

He hadn't had something like that in too long.

But he regretted ditching the Holly Ball setup, the one normal fatherly responsibility he'd ever really had. And he regretted that Angela had to be April Levin's mother, because if Sophie ever figured that out, she would feel so betrayed.

But his thoughts started to fall away as he felt the sheets stir beside him, and he looked over to see mussed brown hair on a pillow, and a slender neck that led to Angela's bare back, and he shoved his regret down.

She turned under the sheets and opened her eyes, looking at Dean for a few moments in mild surprise before grinning. "Well, that was fun," she said after a few moments.

The corner of Dean's mouth twitched upwards. "Sure was."

She leaned back against her pillow and sighed. "Really. I never do this anymore. Not with being a mom."

"A hot mom," Dean corrected, and she laughed. "But, I mean, you could've fooled me. I've been around the block, honey, and I know a well-traveled woman when I meet one."

Lots of women probably would've been immensely turned off by that sentence, but Angela just shrugged. "It's been a while. If I was doing this super often, I'd have liquored you up with something a little better than a dusty bottle of tequila."

Dean chuckled. "Yeah, I'll admit, I'm more of a whiskey guy myself. But hey, I get it. Being a dad doesn't make opportunities like this very common anymore."

"Well," she said, turning her body so that she was facing him, her eyes a little mischievous. "My kid's either nursing a terrible hangover with her friend Candice or she's with her dad, hopefully the former if we're being honest, and your kid's out of town. And I don't have anything to do this morning."

Dean caught on rather quickly, and he was so tempted. But he thought about all of the responsibilities that he had shirked the night before, and he faltered. He attempted to hold himself back from the beautiful, skilled, naked woman lying next to him by talking it out as logically as he could. "I told Sophie I'd stay by the phone so she could call me if she wins," he said, his voice not even convincing himself, much less Angela.

She moved closer to him, and feeling her skin on his weakened his resolve. He was almost annoyed at how easily the promise of sex dissolved his willpower, but he didn't dwell on it for too long. She brought her lips to his ear. "If she's as good as you say, you _know _she'll win. C'mon, Winchester, show a little _confidence_—"

And with that, Dean was on top of her, gently trapping her body with his and leaning down to kiss her slowly and teasingly, and he could feel her lips curl into a victorious smile. "How's that for confidence?" he asked her, grinning against her neck.

And then they began where they had left off the night before, Dean's phone on silent and lodged in his pants pocket on the other side of the room.

* * *

It was a very chilly morning, and her cross country shorts and thin jersey did little to shield Sophie from the biting wind.

The race was about to start, and Sophie was glad that she'd managed to get some good sleep. Of course, that'd been thanks to Remy, who had completely calmed her mind enough to where she'd had hours of peaceful, dreamless sleep the night before. It had been such welcome rest that Sophie hadn't felt compelled to have coffee to wake herself up, although she did have a tiny half-cup to stave off the withdrawal symptoms that came whenever she didn't have caffeine.

Other than that, she'd been drinking lots of water, and she was ready to take on the trail they'd be running. Which was good, because the trail was going to be hell. They were going to be running alongside a river, through a trail-lined thicket of woods, and then around a lake, and judging by the hilly terrain, it was going to be a little tough.

But Sophie was feeling good. She was well-rested, well-trained, and after her late night conversation with Remy, she was finally in a good state of mind.

And she was very ready to win this race.

She looked at all of her teammates lined up in various positions at the starting line. Annabel was right next to her, Sarah and Gina were next to each other a few runners down, and Remy was pretty far away, looking kind of funny but still ridiculously hot in his cross country getup. It kind of annoyed Sophie—the dude could wear a clown suit and still look flawless. It also annoyed her that he was way faster than her, which made sense since he was an angel, but still. Granted, he purposefully went slower during school races so people didn't think he was a freak of nature, but Sophie wished there was just _one _thing she was better at than him.

She shook her head. She needed to get him out of her mind. She needed to get _everything _out of her mind.

She pushed Remy to the backburner in her brain. Maybe she wasn't naturally faster than him, but she could be faster than everyone else here.

So when the whistle blew, she was off.

It took her a while to settle into her rhythm, but once she did, she was feeling good about the race. She wasn't in the lead yet, but she knew she had better endurance than most of these runners, and when everyone else began to slow down, she'd be picking up the pace.

There weren't too many perks to having hunter's training besides being able to keep yourself alive in the face of monsters, but speed, agility, and endurance were a couple of them.

The section of the race that was alongside the river was easy enough, with very few hills or twists or turns. She blew through, an old Eminem song that she often ran to playing in her mind, and she was feeling good as she neared the woods.

The trail in the woods was marked off by yellow tape, and even though the trail was difficult, it was fairly easy to follow. There were a few roots to hurdle and some very rough terrain, but Sophie was used to running in the woods around the bunker, so this was nothing new for her. She found herself flying ahead of the pack, and soon she wasn't just in first place, but ahead of the rest of the group by a substantial distance. When she spared a moment to glance over her shoulder, she couldn't see a single runner anywhere near her. She couldn't even hear anyone.

She gave a slightly victorious grin and kept running.

This was going to be a piece of cake.

Without her even noticing, the Eminem song in her head melted away into another track, and for a moment, it annoyed her. Clearly, Dean was rubbing off on her way too much. But after a while, she found herself running to the rhythm of the song, and so eventually she just went with it, singing the song in her head as she made her way through the forest.

_Whoa, thought it was a nightmare,_

_Lord, it was so true._

_They told me don't go walking slow,_

_The devil's on the loose._

_Better run through the jungle,_

_Better run through the jungle,_

_Better run through the jungle,_

_Whoa, don't look back to see._

She ran and played the song in her head, finding it mildly fitting for her sprint through the woods. She sort of was in a jungle, she supposed. Except what awaited her in these woods wasn't the Devil. Hopefully, it was victory.

The brush was getting thicker and the trees were getting closer together and it was looking more and more like a forest and less and less like a wooded area. She continued the song in her head, blood pumping in tune to the lyrics, and she mentally reminded herself to stop listening to Dean's music when she got back home, because she couldn't keep living like this, with all of his dumb rock songs creeping their way into her pop repertoire.

She was so focused that she barely noticed the odd sensation that something in the forest was shifting, that the path she was on was changing, that some odd force was pulling her off of the trail and into an unmarked, pathless part of the woods.

Finally, a few minutes later, in the middle of the mental Creedence Clearwater Revival concert happening inside of her head, she looked around her and couldn't see any of the yellow tape.

Confusion filled her mind. Hadn't she just been on the marked path just a few moments ago? Heart beating fast and passing it off as only because of running a race, Sophie looked down at her feet and saw she was running in calf-high grass, not the well-trodden dirt path that had been lined up for her.

Feeling panic begin to rise up inside of her, Sophie slowed to a stop and looked around her for the path, but it wasn't anywhere near her. She cursed under her breath and straightened up, putting her hands up behind her head and trying to regain control of her heart rate. She needed to think logically. Surely she could remember how she got there.

But as she thought back, she couldn't remember. How on earth had she gotten off of such a clearly marked trail? There was just no way she could have managed that, not unless something had made her….

Then her heart started pounding again, and this time, it was definitely not because of the cardio. It was panic. Pure panic.

She was just about to call out for Remy when she felt some invisible force take hold of her, and in an instant her body flew backward and slammed into a tree. She gasped as the wind was knocked brutally out of her and tree bark pierced the exposed skin of her shoulders. For the first time since starting the race, she realized that it was cold outside, much colder than it should have felt according to what she'd seen on the Weather Channel that morning.

She struggled against whatever force was holding her against the tree, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't move an inch. She tried to scream, but she suddenly found that she had no voice.

This was bad. This was really, really bad.

And then she heard a voice that chilled her to the bone, and not because of the cold.

"Well, would you look at that. Sophia Winchester, in the flesh. What a momentous occasion."

Her skin crawled and she looked around frantically for who the voice belonged to. After a moment of being suspended against the tree and looking around, he finally appeared, stepping out from a thicket of trees, wearing slacks and a pressed collared shirt. He looked fairly normal, with salt and pepper hair and surprisingly pretty blue eyes. He stood tall, probably six and a half feet, and he wore a sickening grin on his face.

This was worse than really, really bad, she realized. This was pure evil, staring her in the eyes.

Sophie didn't need him to say his name for her to know who he was. But he told her anyway.

"It's a true pleasure to finally meet the beautiful daughter of Dean Winchester," he told her as he approached her, until his face was mere inches from hers. "My name's Beelzebub."

**See ya Saturday ~ Lacey :)**


	67. Chapter 67: The Message

_Chapter 67: The Message_

Sophie stared at Beelzebub, utterly paralyzed with fear. Even if he hadn't been holding her up against the tree with his demonic powers, she wouldn't have been able to move out of sheer terror. She watched as he smiled at her, revealing a set of strangely perfect teeth. She couldn't look away from him, but her blood had run cold.

"I take it by your warm reception that you've heard of me," Beelzebub said with a grin.

Sophie silently begged Remy to show up. How could he possibly fail to protect her now, when he was in the same woods that she was in?

But she didn't have time to think about that for very long, because Beelzebub was talking again. "You might think that this isn't real. But it is. Time has frozen, for the moment at least, in this little clearing of the forest. There is nothing or no one that can come to your aid. So you might as well talk to me, darling."

Sophie blinked a few times, her heart pounding so hard she was sure it would give out soon. "We're going to kill you," she finally managed to choke out through her fear. She was a little proud that her voice hadn't wavered, but judging by Beelzebub's reaction, she hadn't exactly made a huge show of strength.

Beelzebub laughed, a big, booming laugh that filled the woods around her and shook the very air she was having a hard time inhaling. And then he took another step towards her, and to her horror, he lifted his hand to slowly stroke her face. The skin of her cheek under his touch seemed to freeze over, like his fingertips were pure ice, and Sophie shuddered at the feeling of her skin under his hands. "You have such a lovely voice, darling, to be saying such brash things," he told her softly. "You know, you're a much more fascinating creature than I anticipated. I knew Dean Winchester had a pretty face, but you're exquisite. Must have had one enchanting mother to create a delicious thing such as yourself."

Sophie felt sick as the demon's fingers ghosted back and forth across her cheek and moved to her hairline, leaving trails of ice in their wake. His face neared hers and she thought she was going to pass out from sheer terror, but then he leaned to the side and put his nose right over her ear and her entire body stiffened. "Your hair smells lovely," he whispered. She couldn't help but release the faintest of whimpers, and he smiled. She could feel the tug of his lips against her ear. "Rumor has it you're a little shy when it comes to physical contact, but I think with a little bit of…_persuasion_, that could change."

She pulled her head away from him, closing her eyes and craning her neck to try and escape his touch, but with a quick movement of one of his fingers her head was jerked back to stare him straight in the eye. Sophie had always read about piercing eyes in books, but now she understood it. Looking straight into Beelzebub's eyes physically hurt her, like a stabbing sensation in her brain. "Why are you here?" she asked in a low whisper.

"An excellent question," he told her softly, so close to her she could smell him, a nauseating combination of cologne and blood. "You see, my darling Sophia, there have been whispers that the Winchesters have found a ritual to stop me from opening Lucifer's Cage. I wasn't too worried at first; after all, nowadays having a ritual in your possession won't do anything for you unless you happen to know a three thousand-year-old scholar who can translate it for you. But…it sounds like you have all gotten very, very close to cracking it."

"So you feel threatened," Sophie said, and despite her terror, the corner of her mouth twitched upwards. "And if you feel threatened…we're on the right track. We could actually save my dad."

Beelzebub's grin faltered slightly. "You're a little too close for comfort," he admitted. "But after all, I did anticipate a little defiance from the infamous Winchesters. Which is why I've decided to deliver a message."

And with that, he pulled out a very long, surprisingly thin, lethal looking blade from out of his sleeve, and he lifted it up into the air to gaze at it. Sophie stared at it in fear, and she started shaking, and not because of the chilly fall morning air.

"This blade's an interesting fellow," Beelzebub mused. "It's a bit of a multipurpose tool. It's called _synkomidí̱_. It's Greek for 'harvest.' It's what I'm going to use to rip your father's soul from his body so that I can use it to release Lucifer and kill him."

He placed the tip of the blade on Sophie's collar bone, and she suddenly couldn't breathe as a fist of fear closed tightly over her heart. "It's also good just for stabbing the life out of people," he continued, offering her a wicked grin and an impish wink. "And that, darling Sophia, is why I'm here. Because what better way to send those brothers a message than to kill the girl they both love? Nothing quite says 'I mean business' more than a little bit of murder."

He leaned into her again, bringing his face to her neck, replacing the tip of his knife with the tip of his nose, inhaling softly as he traced it across her collar bone, up her neck, and to her ear. "It's a bit of a shame, honestly, because I find you…truly riveting." She felt his body flush against hers, his free hand tracing the outline of the waistband of her shorts in slow, methodical strokes that made her stomach churn in disgust. She released an involuntary sound that could only be described as some sort of gasping gag. "Your body, under my command, would make sweet, dark magic, I'm sure of it," he murmured into her ear. Then, just as Sophie was sure she would either throw up or die right on the spot, he pulled away, looking into her terrified eyes with a sparkle in his own. "But, alas, what must be done must be done."

Sophie's body was trembling to the point where she didn't even remember what it felt like to be warm. She'd never felt fear like this, never.

But she couldn't just roll over. She couldn't stand shaking in her boots as death approached. "You're not going to win this," Sophie told him, her voice barely an unsteady whisper. "You're nothing. My dad and Sam are going to kill you. They'll look back on this and you won't even rank in the top ten of evil bastards that they've taken down."

A flash of anger lit up Beelzebub's face for just a moment, but then it faded away. "Maybe. Maybe not," he said. "But they'll remember me as the evil bastard that murdered you in the middle of the woods."

And with that his hand pushed forward with _synkomidí̱_, and Sophie closed her eyes and screamed.

But nothing happened.

She heard the sound of a body slamming into a body, and she opened her eyes to see what was going on. When she did, she felt her heart soar at the sight of Remy barreling into Beelzebub, a rage she'd never seen before in his face. He was utterly fearful in that moment, his green-grey eyes dark with hatred and wrath, muscles rippling as he and Beelzebub slammed into a large oak tree.

Beelzebub hissed in anger, and with what looked like a tremendous amount of exertion, he managed to fling Remy off of him and into a nearby boulder. "You've been joined with a guardian angel, Sophia?" Beelzebub asked in breathless surprise. "That certainly makes things more interesting. I probably shouldn't have told you how delicious I think you'd be. Guardians tend to hate that sort of thing."

Remy got up immediately, bleeding from his head but looking completely unfazed, and silently stalked his way back towards Beelzebub, an angel blade suddenly in his hand. Sophie had no idea how it had even gotten there, but she wasn't going to ask questions.

Seeming to understand that he was now in over his head, Beelzebub used what looked like the last bit of his strength to render Remy immobile. Her guardian angel froze mid-stride, like he'd gotten stuck in wet cement. But Remy was glaring at Beelzebub in concentration and determination and the desire to kill, and he grunted as he pushed back against whatever force Beelzebub was throwing his way and managed to take a few steps closer towards him.

Sensing he only had moments before Remy broke through, Beelzebub turned to Sophie and flashed her a harried smile. "I suppose this is goodbye for now. I trust you'll pass the message along to Dean, my darling?"

And then he was gone.

Sophie felt the demonic hold on her disappear, and she slid to the ground in a heap, catching herself lightly with her hands but then losing all strength in her arms and crumbling to the forest floor. In just seconds, there were hands on her shoulders, and Remy was speaking to her in a low voice, but blood was rushing in her ears as her heart pounded and her body quaked, and while she could just barely hear what he was saying, she certainly couldn't respond.

_Are you okay…please tell me you're okay…Ace, I need to hear you say that you're okay, I know I can feel it but I need to hear you say it…c'mon, Sophie, talk to me…Tell me you're okay…._

Suddenly she could no longer breathe. She gasped, trying to drink in some oxygen, but it was fruitless. Her panic had hit the ceiling and she couldn't take in air anymore and everything was spinning and all she could feel were the icy spots on her face where Beelzebub had touched her and all she could see were his soulless eyes.

And then there were two gentle fingers on her forehead, and she was unconscious.

* * *

Sam was annoyed.

It was bad enough Dean had ditched him and Cas at the Holly Ball. They'd had to fend for themselves with a bunch of dads that clearly wanted to be there just about as much as they did, and if Sam was being honest it actually hadn't been the _worst_ experience ever. But it was still irritating that Dean had stayed for just long enough to catch the eye of a beautiful woman and hightail it out of there. It was worse that he had taken the Impala and left them with no ride back home. Cas had been forced to fly Sam back to the bunker, which the younger Winchester hated immensely.

And all of that was frustrating for Sam, and understandably so.

But it was just plain annoying that Dean wouldn't answer his damn phone.

Sam was sitting in the bunker on that Saturday morning, still in his sweatpants and ratty sleep T-shirt. He had a coffee in one hand and his phone in the other. He glanced at the text Dean had sent him the night before. _Taking Baby and getting laid. We should volunteer more often_. He shook his head, wondering if he was more annoyed or more jealous. He decided it was a mix of the two.

But either way, it was now ten o'clock in the morning, and Dean still wasn't answering his phone.

Sam wasn't too worried. After all, this was classic Dean behavior. He was like some weird, inverted, adult form of a teenager. His daughter was away for the weekend, so he was acting out, instead of it being the other way around. Not to mention with his impending doom, he was bound to make the most of any potential hookups.

And, all that aside, it had just been a really long time since Dean, or Sam for that matter, had been with any women. So he couldn't one hundred percent fault Dean.

But he did fault Dean for shirking the one thing he'd told Sophie he'd do, which was show up at the Holly Ball. And he did fault Dean for sleeping with the mother of the one person Sophie didn't get along with at school. She was sure to get upset about that if she ever found out.

Sam knew he should start scouring the Internet to see if there were any cases he and Dean needed to check out, but he was having a relatively peaceful morning without Dean or Sophie there to bicker, so he decided to stall. He scrolled through his phone, deciding maybe he should clear out his contacts, when he saw a name he'd almost forgotten was there.

Jen. The nurse from St. Louis.

Sam glanced at her name, thinking about the woman he'd met at the hospital. She had been beautiful, with soft blonde hair and thoughtful brown eyes and a light dusting of freckles over her nose. They'd talked a lot, and it had been natural to exchange numbers. It hadn't gone beyond conversation, but Sam had felt a ghost of a connection with her.

Of course, he hadn't pursued it. Any decent woman would never be with him, and even if they would, Sam couldn't allow it. Because all that ever led to was heartbreak in the best case scenario, or death in the worst case scenario.

Still, the temptation to dial the number was strong in that moment. He imagined how easy it would be, to ask her on a date, to make the weekend trip to St. Louis and have dinner with her, maybe get a goodnight kiss if he was bold enough, maybe more if luck was on his side.

His finger hovered over the call button next to her name, and each slow beat of his pulse seemed to speak to him. _Call…her…call…her…call…her…._

And just as he was about to give in to the temptation, there was a crashing sound behind him.

He dropped the phone on the table, the call immediately out of his mind, and he jumped up and tried to remember where the nearest weapon was as he turned to see what the hell had happened.

And then he saw Remy and Sophie, both wearing their cross country uniforms, amidst a pile of books that had been knocked out of a bookshelf. Sam felt his stomach drop as he saw Sophie's pale body in Remy's arms.

Remy opened his mouth before Sam could say anything. "She's fine," he said quickly. "Or, well, she's not hurt. Hold on."

He quickly made his way through the bunker and towards Sophie's room, Sam trailing him. "What the hell happened?" he exclaimed, trying to get a better look at Sophie as Remy opened the door to her room with just a glance at the doorknob and took her in, setting her down on the bed. She looked small and feeble against the sheets, and Sam looked her over from head to toe. Besides a few shallow scratches on the backs of her shoulders, she seemed unharmed. Sam looked over at Remy with narrow eyes. "Start talking. Now."

Remy's eyes were dark, and Sam could sense that this was the first moment he'd had to take stock of whatever had happened. "She was so scared," he said after a moment, and it sounded like he was talking to himself and not to Sam. His eyes were trained on Sophie as he spoke, as if taking his gaze elswhere would cause her to disappear. "She was terrified, and I could feel it, and I could feel the cloud of danger but I couldn't find her, not anywhere. He cloaked her, hid her, hid the location, even hid the time. It was smart, I almost couldn't get to her, but I finally did and just in time, too, because—"

"Remy!" Sam yelled at him, and Remy turned his head to Sam, his eyes widening by just a fraction, as if just remembering someone else was in the room. "Start saying something that makes sense, okay?"

Remy nodded, glancing down at Sophie again. "It was Beelzebub, Sam," he said darkly. "He found her."

The words stopped Sam in his tracks, just as he was about to go re-check Sophie for injuries. He froze, and then he lifted his head to look at Remy. "What?"

Remy nodded. "Beelzebub. He got to her, in the middle of the woods. Had her pinned against a tree and it looked like he was about to run her through with this weird blade that I've never seen before. And he was saying things to her…." Remy's teeth clenched, and then he shook his head. "It was close. Too close."

Sam sunk down to sit on the bed next to Sophie, gently pushing her hair back out of her eyes. Her skin was cold and clammy, and he frowned. "Are you sure she's okay?"

Remy nodded. "After I forced Beelzebub to leave, she sort of fell to the ground and was gasping for air and I think it was…I'm not one hundred percent sure of the terminology, I think you guys call it a panic attack? I didn't know how to help her, so I just kind of…knocked her out."

Sam frowned, about to nail him with questions like why the hell he thought knocking a girl out in the middle of her having a panic attack would be a good idea, but then he realized he couldn't even come close to giving him a hard time. The angel had just saved Sophie from certain death. He deserved a pass on this one.

Remy took a deep breath at Sam's silence. "She's unharmed," he reiterated. "She'll wake up scared and disoriented, though. And I should wake her up soon…the longer she's out, the more confused she'll be when she wakes up."

"Okay, just hold on," Sam said, standing up from the bed. "I need to call Dean."

Remy nodded. "I felt that he wasn't here. What's he doing?"

Sam scowled. "The question's not so much a _what _as it is a _who_."

"Ah," Remy said, head tilting slightly towards the side in consideration. "I take it Sophie doesn't know about it."

"It's not like it's been carrying on for a long time," Sam told him, not sure why he was confiding in the young angel. "They just met last night, and it's, uh, been a while for Dean. But the woman…the woman would make Sophie angry, I'll just leave it at that."

Remy considered it. "Well, then, I'd hold off on telling her for a little while. She's already going to be a mess when she wakes up."

Sam nodded. "I'll just go grab my phone. You stay with her."

"Of course."

Sam left the room in a rush and grabbed his phone from where he'd dropped it on the table in the main room. He exited out of the screen with Jen's contact information and instead called Dean.

It immediately went to voicemail.

Even though he had sort of expected it, Sam was furious. Dean _never _turned off his phone, but the one time that he did, Sam desperately needed to reach him. He called twice more, fruitlessly, and on the next call he finally left a message. "Dean, dammit, you need to get back here _now_. There's been an incident and…long story short, Sophie's here and she's okay, I think, I don't know, she's unconscious, but…something really bad happened, so hurry." He hung up, tucked the phone in his pocket, and then made his way back to Sophie's room.

Remy was still standing next to Sophie's bed, his arms crossed and his eyes narrowed in thought. He looked up as Sam walked in. "Dean didn't answer," the angel said flatly.

Sam shook his head. "I'll deal with it later."

Remy just shrugged. "I need to go back to the race," he told the younger Winchester brother. "People are going to be wondering where she is, since she was in first place when Beelzebub found her. I need to go in and do some damage control, change a few people's memories, alter some timelines… it's going to take me a while."

Sam nodded, taking a deep breath. "Are you going to wake her up before you go?"

"Yeah," Remy said. "She's got to face it sometime. I'll leave once I know she's okay, for the most part."

Sam nodded again and sat down by Sophie. Remy walked up next to her head, staring intently at her face for a moment, and then he pressed two fingers to her forehead.

Sam watched as her eyes flew open, wild with fear, and she sat up, eyes darting back and forth, her breathing immediately picking up drastically. The look in her eyes seemed to Sam to be the look of someone who was mentally in another place.

He could tell a part of her was still in that forest with Beelzebub.

He couldn't help but react, and gently he placed his hands on her shoulders. "Soph, it's just me, it's just—"

She moaned and recoiled from his touch, shrinking backwards into the headboard and closing her eyes. Sam let go of her and watched with a broken heart as her body started trembling. Sam glanced at Remy, and he was surprised to see the look of anger in the angel's eyes. Anger at the demon and what he'd done, anger at himself for being unable to get there earlier. But he pushed back the anger and said in his calmest voice, "Ace, you're safe now. You're home, in bed. Sam's here. You are safe."

Sophie didn't stop shaking, but her body did unwind itself from the position it had recoiled into, and after a moment, she opened her eyes, her gaze immediately falling on the six foot four man in front of her. "Sammy," she choked out, and then she leaned forward and practically threw herself into his arms. He immediately folded his arms around her, crushing her to him as her body shook and her head burrowed into his chest, seeking familiarity and safety.

"I've gotcha," he said, rubbing her back and trying to warm her freezing, shivering body. "You're okay."

She stayed like that for a while until her quickened breathing subsided and she finally started to warm up and calm down a little bit. She lifted her head slightly, and Sam saw that while she hadn't cried a single tear, her face was completely drained of blood. Clearly, Beelzebub had really scared the living hell out of her.

"Sophie, you're safe now," he repeated into her hair, trying to make the last of her tremors go away. "Remy saved you. There's nothing that can get you here."

He glanced around to find Remy, but with a quick scan of the room, Sam saw that the angel had already disappeared.

After a minute more of Sophie regaining her bearings, she sat up from Sam, looking at him with wide eyes. "Sam…oh my God, Sam, he was going to kill me. He was _right there_, he was…he was going to…."

"Hey," he said, rubbing her arms gently. "You don't have to talk about it right now, okay? Relax."

She gulped, nodding. She took a long, shaky breath, and then she looked at Sam with a frown. "I was winning, too," she said softly. "I was totally going to win the race."

Sam let out a surprised laugh. "I don't think that's the most important thing here, Soph."

"I'm fixating on dumb things as a coping mechanism, Sam," Sophie said, unable to smile just yet but offering him as kind a look as she could. "Let me fixate."

He grinned, looking down at her warmly. "Fixate away, then."

She nodded, and then she frowned. "Where's Dad?"

Sam blinked once, and then quickly said, "He's out running a few errands. I left him a message, he should be back soon."

If she thought anything sounded suspicious, she didn't say anything. She just nodded, and then she shivered. "I think I'm going to take a shower," she said softly. "I'm cold, I'm gross, I can't get the feeling of his hands off of me, and—"

"What?" Sam exclaimed, immediately pulling away from her sharply and staring down at her with narrow eyes. "What did he do to you?" When she didn't immediately answer, Sam asked more sharply. "Sophie! What did he do?"

"Nothing," she mumbled. "Honestly. He just…he touched my face and he was really close to m-me," she said, faltering, remembering Beelzebub pressed up against her body, his hands at her waistline, his fingers on her face and his nose tracing lines on her neck and his lips grinning maliciously against her ear.

Looking back, she could tell it was all just a way to magnify her terror, likely because he knew about those insecurities she had about physical intimacy. But regardless of the motive, she knew she couldn't tell Sam everything, because how could she explain all that to him?

At Sam's concerned and unconvinced face, she frowned. "Sam, besides being a millisecond away from running me through with some crazy Greek sword thingy, he didn't really do anything except talk. He was just…well, he was just freaking scary."

"I know," Sam said softly. "Why don't you take that shower? I'll try calling Dean again."

She nodded. "Okay."

Sam left the room, and as he closed the door, he heard her let out a long, shaky breath, and his chest tightened as he closed the door.

He opened his phone again and called Dean's phone. Voicemail again.

He was going to kill his brother, he really was.

**Guys, seriously, your reviews recently have been nearly making me blush they're so sweet and encouraging and supportive. I'm so glad that doing something I love to do is making you guys happy, too!**

**There will be an update for sure next Saturday, and I'm going to try very hard to squeeze in an update on Wednesday, but I just can't make any promises. Keep your eyes peeled, though! ~ Lacey :)**


	68. Chapter 68: Herbal Tea And Recollections

_Chapter 68: Herbal Tea and Recollections_

Dean laid back in the bed, covered in white sheets, with his hands behind his heads, smiling in utter satisfaction.

He and Angela had been going at it for hours, and while Dean would not label it the most mind-blowing sex he'd ever had, it had certainly been one hell of a time. And man, had he needed that. A little I'm-gonna-die-in-six-months-so-screw-it sex had been just what the doctor ordered.

He heard Angela giggle next to him. "So I feel like I don't need to tell you this, but we can't tell our kids about this."

Dean snorted. "Yeah, you don't need to worry about that, trust me."

"Glad we're on the same page." He turned and watched as she sat up, grabbing her bra, which was flung on the end of the bed, and throwing it over her shoulders. "Well, listen. I've got a meeting with a potential client in thirty minutes, so I've got to go." She leaned over and managed to pull open the drawer to her dresser, grabbing a pair of underwear and pulling them on before getting up and making her way to her closet. "But, uh, feel free to shower up before you go, if you want!" she called from the closet, and Dean watched as she started buttoning up a white collared shirt.

Dean let out a long breath as he sat up. "That's the least graciously I've ever been kicked out of a woman's home," he admitted, glancing over as Angela was zipping up a skirt.

She shot him an apologetic glance. "Please don't take it personally. Last night and this morning were…amazing, really. You're definitely one for the books. But, uh, I don't do relationships or anything, not since April's dad." She mused thoughtfully as she picked out a pair of heels. "And hey, I wasn't _that _rude. I offered you a shower, didn't I?"

Dean chuckled. "You did. And I might just take you up on that offer."

"Okay, sure. Just make sure you lock the door behind you. There's a key under the mat."

Dean scoffed. "Really? An intelligent woman such as yourself keeps her key under the mat?"

Angela shrugged, touching up her makeup before pinning her hair back so that sex-tussled waves suddenly looked like a professional up-do. "It's a safe neighborhood." She walked over and grabbed her purse off of the bedside table, and then gave Dean one last look. "Thanks for last night. It was way better than the Holly Ball."

Dean grinned at her. "Damn straight, honey."

She smiled, and then left the room.

Once she was gone, Dean threw the sheets off of his body and stretched, the night before and that morning making him feel younger and more limber. He got out of Angela's bed and collected his clothes into his arms, glancing at the posh looking room around him before making his way to the bathroom, dumping his clothes on the floor, and walking into the shower.

It took him five solid minutes to figure out how the hell to figure out the jigsaw puzzle that was Angela's shower, with its three shower heads and multiple heat functions. He took one look at the floral scented soap that sat in the shower holder and immediately decided he was just going to rinse off, and he stood under the hot water for another five minutes before getting out and drying off with a towel Angela had thought to quickly set on the counter on her way out the door.

As he started putting his clothes back on, he felt his phone in his back pocket and pulled it out. He pressed the home button, but was surprised to see that it was off. Dean frowned. He never turned his phone off. The battery must have died and he never thought to plug it in to charge in the excitement of getting caught up with Angela.

He looked around her room to see if maybe her phone charger was the same as his, and luckily for him, it was. He plugged the phone in and set it on the counter as he pulled his shirt on over his head and threw his jacket on over it.

Once he was all dressed, his phone still hadn't turned on yet, so he meandered around Angela's home, looking at the modern yet homey feel that the place had. There were pictures of April in the living room, which served to trigger the guilt that he'd been pushing down. He decided he needed something to drink, and he walked into the kitchen and used the glass he'd been drinking tequila out of the night before to gulp down some water.

After a few more minutes of nosing around, he figured his phone had to at least be charged enough to last until he could plug it into his car charger, so he went back into Angela's room and made his way over to the counter that his phone was sitting on. He picked up the phone and looked at the screen.

Seven missed calls from Sam, and one voicemail from two hours earlier.

He rolled his eyes. Sam must've been really pissed that he and Cas had been abandoned at the Holly Ball. Granted, Dean couldn't really blame him, but they were grown adults. If Sam had had the opportunity to ditch Dean to go have sex with a ridiculously hot woman, then he would've done it in a heartbeat. Probably. So as far as Dean was concerned, Sam could shove it.

Preparing himself for a voicemail filled with his brother's annoyed voice, Dean opened up the voicemail and put the phone to his ear.

"_Dean, dammit, you need to get back here now. There's been an incident and…long story short, Sophie's here and she's okay, I think, I don't know, she's unconscious, but…something really bad happened, so hurry._"

Dean felt like the air had just been drop-kicked out of his chest. He thought that maybe, his overly paranoid and guilty mind had just confused the words somehow, so he replayed it. When he heard the same thing, he stared at his phone as his mind began to race, jumping to terrible conclusions about the wellbeing of his family. "Son of a bitch!" he shouted angrily, and without even thinking he bolted out of the room and paused only to grab the keys to the Impala before running out of Angela's home.

He didn't even pause to lock the door behind him.

* * *

Dean kept trying to reach Sam as he drove well over the speed limit back to the bunker, but Sam wasn't picking up. He finally left a nearly frantic voicemail, yelling into the phone, "Dammit, Sam, pick up the freaking phone and tell me what the hell is going on!"

Dean slammed his phone against the steering wheel in frustration as he pressed down harder on the accelerator, his heart pumping angry, worried blood through his body.

Something had happened to Sophie and in the middle of it all, he'd been in bed with a virtual stranger. No, even worse. He'd been in bed with _April Levin's mother_. God, Sophie was going to kill him.

At least, if she was even in the condition to kill him.

The thought made him drive even faster, and what should have been a forty minute drive was only a twenty minute drive. His parking job outside of the bunker was horrendous, but he couldn't care less as he dashed out of the car, slammed the door shut, and nearly sprinted inside of the bunker.

He was already yelling as soon as he opened the door. "Sophie?" he called out, closing the door behind him. "Sam?" Nobody answered, and he made it down the stairs faster than he ever had in his life. "Sophie?" he yelled even louder, an edge of desperation in his voice.

Suddenly, he heard footsteps, and then he saw Sam rounding the corner, a frustrated look on his face. "Would you shut up?" he hissed at Dean. "She's sleeping! God knows she could use it."

"What the hell happened?" Dean yelled at him. "I get this stupidly cryptic voicemail and I call you a million times and then I haul ass to get here and all I'm thinking is my daughter could be dead, or worse! What hap—"

"Dean! Shut the hell up! You might wake her—!"

"Too late."

Both brothers turned quickly to see Sophie standing meekly at the end of the table. They hadn't even seen her walk in.

Dean took her in, and he could tell something awful had happened. Her hair, still wet from a shower, was falling down around her face in limp, damp curls. She was wearing a massive Stanford sweater that definitely belonged to Sam, and her favorite long pink and yellow pajama pants. But her eyes were a little duller than usual, a haunted look in them. Seeing her like that made Dean's heart plummet.

He looked back at Sam. "_What happened?_" he asked again.

Sophie cleared her throat, and Dean looked back at her. "I was running my race and… Beelzebub found me."

Dean just stared at her, trying to figure out if his ears had heard the correct words. They couldn't have. Because there was no way his sixteen-year-old daughter had just faced the deadliest demon currently walking the planet. "No," he said matter-of-factly. "No, you're cloaked, how would he have found you?"

She shook her head. "I don't know," she said in a small voice. "But he did, and if Remy hadn't been there, he would have killed me."

Dean's eyes narrowed, and immediately he strode across the room and looked at Sophie from head to toe, trying to see if something was hurt. "Are you okay? Did that bastard do anything to you?"

Sophie shrugged, clearly uncomfortable, acting more shy and detached than she usually did. "I'm fine," she said after a moment.

"She did have a couple scrapes on her shoulders," Sam cut in. "Nothing a little Neosporin and some Band-Aids couldn't fix, though."

Dean ignored him. "Sophie, dammit, what did he do to you?" When she didn't answer immediately, he turned to Sam again. "What did he do? She doesn't come away looking that terrible from a confrontation with a demon like Beelzebub without him doing something to her."

"I'm right here. Please don't act like I'm not," Sophie said quietly, sounding only mildly annoyed, as if she couldn't muster up the willpower to be properly aggravated.

Sam shook his head, ignoring her. "She hasn't told me any details yet either, Dean. She doesn't have to right now. Let her have some time."

"No," Dean said angrily, looking down at Sophie. "You need to tell us what happened, okay?"

"Dean," Sam snapped at his brother's tone.

"No, Sam," Dean said, and then he looked at Sophie carefully. "I just...I've gotta know, Soph. I've gotta know."

Sophie bit her lip, looking a little overwhelmed. Dean took a step closer to her, but she cringed and took a step back. He backed off, a little hurt. "I'm sorry," she said quickly. "I just… I don't know what's going on with me."

"Soph, it's okay," he said, trying to force his voice to be calmer and not reflect the raging need to kill that had welled up inside of him. "I just want to know what happened so we can try to make sense of it."

Sophie nodded. "Okay. I'll tell you. Just give me one second."

Before he could say anything, she slipped away into the kitchen. He looked back at Sam, who eyed him cagily. "She looks terrible," Dean said again.

"Yeah, well, the demon that currently has your soul in the palm of his hand was just a millimeter away from skewering her," Sam said scathingly. "So I'm not surprised."

Dean glared at Sam. "Look, I get it, you're annoyed at me."

"Annoyed?" Sam exclaimed, and then he quickly glanced in the direction that Sophie had disappeared and looked back at Dean, lowering his voice. "I was annoyed when you ditched us at that dumb fundraiser to go screw around with your daughter's enemy's mother. I was annoyed when you took the car. But when you turn your phone off and miss a bunch of calls about your own kid? That doesn't annoy me, Dean, that pisses me off."

"How was I supposed to know this would happen?" Dean shot back.

"Who cares? You don't turn your phone off. Ever."

"It was an accident! My phone died, it wasn't like I did it on purpose!"

"Oh, c'mon, Dean—"

At that moment, Sophie walked back in, holding a steaming mug in her hand. "If you two are done arguing in hushed voices, I'm ready to talk now."

Sam tore his frustrated gaze away from his brother and looked back at his niece. "Soph, I don't think coffee is really a good idea, you don't need to be all caffeinated right now."

"It's not coffee. It's tea. Herbal. The box says it's supposed to calm you down."

"Since when do you drink herbal tea?" Dean asked her.

"Since when do you turn your phone off to go 'run errands' and then come back looking freshly showered?" she retorted, and that's when he saw it. That look of hurt and betrayal in her eyes that she'd clearly been trying to hide. It hit him a lot harder than he thought it would. And then, inside, he cringed. Because she didn't even know all of it. She didn't even know he'd been with April's mom. That would make it so much worse.

For the first time, he was lost for words. "I…."

"I don't want to know," Sophie sighed, sitting down and taking a tiny sip of the tea. "At least, not right now."

Dean nodded, and he sat down next to Sophie, Sam sitting down on the opposite side of the table. "Okay," Sam said gently. "Why don't you tell us what happened."

Sophie looked down at her mug, unable to make eye contact. "I was, uh, you know, running. I was in first place."

"Atta girl," Dean said with a grin, but when he looked at the expression on Sophie's face, his grin waned. "Sorry. Continue."

"I was running," she repeated, "and…I don't know how else to explain it other than the forest just started changing as I ran. The path was really well-marked with yellow tape and the trail was really worn down, but one moment I'm running on the trail and the next I was just…in this little clearing way out in the woods, and I couldn't find the path anywhere. And I started to realize it was all really fishy so I was going to call Remy and then…next thing I know I'm literally in the air and then I'm pinned to a tree."

Dean frowned, staring at her. "He likes to throw people around like that. My shoulder still hasn't been quite the same since the first time we met him."

She nodded. "He just…talked to me. I was too scared to say much anything back. And then he…well, he tried to kill me, and then Remy showed up and—"

"Woah," Sam said, stopping her. "Look, I'm not trying to push you, but I know you're leaving out huge chunks. What did he say to you? Why did he want to kill you? And…," he hesitated, and then continued in a softer voice. "You said that he touched you, Sophie, and I'm not buying that it was nothing. You're…you're sort of acting like you were after the Bash, with Ryan, and I just want to make sure—"

"Touched you?" Dean asked, looking back at Sam questioningly before returning his gaze to Sophie. "He _touched _you? What the hell does that mean?"

Sophie looked at Sam in annoyance. "It's nothing, or at least nothing like you're hinting at. And it was definitely nothing like the Bash. Beelzebub just… he touched my face. He was really…close to me. And the way he talked to me…he was just really creepy, that's all. Not that surprising, considering he's a demon."

"Back up," Dean said sharply. "How did he talk to you? What did he say?"

Sophie looked upset and overwhelmed again, and she took a moment to take a sip of her tea, making a quick face. "This stuff does not taste like coffee and I don't like it," she muttered before taking another tiny sip.

"Soph," Dean said, trying not to sound as impatient as he felt.

She took a deep breath, staring into the mug. "He just, um…called me _darling_ a lot. Said I looked… delicious, that I was riveting to him." She winced as she said it, and then her eyes darkened in remembrance. "He said my hair smelled n-nice. He said…." She couldn't repeat it, but the words were burned into her memory.

_Your body, under my command, would make sweet, dark magic_.

The memory sent a chill down her spine, and even though the sleeves of Sam's Stanford sweater were far longer than her arms, her hands were freezing underneath the fabric. She felt Sam and Dean looking at her with expectant eyes, and she cringed. "He just said things, okay?" she shot at them defensively, clearly not ready to share anymore. "He knew what to say to make me the most scared. He knows what he's doing."

As she pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, Dean's eyes went from narrow to just sad. He hated seeing her like this, hated it more than anything. Actually, no. He hated Beelzebub more than anything. Hated what he'd done to her, hated that he'd been able to reduce her to the scared little girl sitting in front of him now.

And he could tell that his daughter was holding back and that she wasn't telling them everything that had happened, but he couldn't push her anymore, not when she looked like she was just a gust of wind away from collapsing.

"Did he say anything…that you think is worth repeating?" Sam asked her slowly.

She chewed on the inside of her mouth, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as she painfully sorted through her memories. "No. I mean…the Sparknotes version is that he knows we're getting close to figuring out a way to stop him, and he wanted to kill me to…to send a message to you guys."

_Nothing says 'I mean business' more than a little bit of murder_.

Dean leaned back, looking over at Sam. "Well then. Message received. Sam, we're shutting this down."

Sophie's head shot up at the same time as Sam's. "What?" they both exclaimed.

"You heard me," Dean said sternly, standing up from his seat. "This ends now. I'm gonna call Charlie, get her to stop looking for a translator."

"Dad, no!" Sophie said, and for the first time that day Dean saw tears in her eyes. "Don't be an idiot!"

"Sophie, he almost killed you today! During your freaking school race!" he yelled angrily, and his tone caused Sophie to flinch. He saw, and he felt bad as he lowered his voice. "I will not be the reason you die, kiddo. End of story."

"Dean, you're just acting out right now," Sam reasoned. "Just take a second to calm down and think this through—"

Dean glared at Sam. "He almost killed her, Sam! What about that don't you get?"

"Remy saved me!" Sophie exclaimed. "Just like it's his job to. I'm perfectly fine. You can't let this stop you from trying to save your soul!"

"Perfectly fine?" Dean repeated. "Soph, you look like you were just drowned, brought back to life, and then re-drowned. It's been hours and you're still pale as a sheet and shaking and I will _not_ let him terrorize you like this."

She was silent for a moment, and then she locked her gaze with his. "It's Beelzebub, Dad," she said quietly. "He's not going to go easy on us. I just need to…I don't know, build up a thicker skin or something. We can't roll over, even if he _had_ killed me. If he succeeds, this whole world gets blown to crap. And no matter how much anyone cares about me, I'm not worth the world."

"Yes you are," Dean nearly snarled, taking Sophie by surprise. "The fact that you would even say something like that makes you worth it." He grabbed his phone and opened it up, scrolling to Charlie's name. "This is the last we're talking about this. I'm calling Charlie. This is over."

He stormed out of the room, leaving a teary eyed Sophie with Sam.

Sophie sniffed. "This is my fault," she moaned. "I shouldn't have told you guys what Beelzebub said. I shouldn't have told you guys anything."

Sam shook his head, putting his hand on Sophie's shoulder and giving it a small squeeze. He gave her a sad look. "No, we needed to know. Dean's just angry right now, and he's scared for you. Hell, I am, too. We just have to give him some time, he'll realize he's acting stupid and come back around. No matter what he says, Charlie's going to keep looking. This is classic Dean behavior. He just needs some time. We'll get through this."

She took a breath to steady her tears and then looked down at the tea. She'd barely had half the cup. She looked back up at Sam. "In the meantime, am I still banned from coffee, or do I need to keep drinking this crap?"

Sam chuckled, looking relieved that she was finally able to show a bit of lightness. "Tell you what. You sleep for a couple hours, and the coffee's all yours."

She grinned, placing her head on her knees and looking at her uncle in gratitude. "Thank you, Sam. For being here for me today. For taking care of me."

Sam gave her a long look and a bittersweet smile. He stood up, grabbed her half-drunk mug of tea, and then leaned down to place a soft kiss on the top of her head. "Always, kiddo."

He left the room, taking the mug with him, and she slowly got up and made her way back to her room.

* * *

When she opened the door, she saw Remy sitting on her bed.

She supposed she should've been freaked out at his sudden appearance, but she was so exhausted and overwhelmed that she just stared at him. He was watching her carefully, as if just looking at her wrong could shatter her.

She stepped into her room and closed the door, keeping her eyes on him the whole time. Without saying a word, she walked up to him until she stood a foot in front of him, and with him sitting on the bed and her standing, they were almost at the same eye level. "You saved me," she finally said in a soft, but sure, voice.

He looked at her intensely, and she felt very small under his gaze. "Always, Ace."

She sat down next to him and he scooted over, giving her some room. She leaned back against the headboard and then turned her head to look at him. "I'm really glad you're my guardian angel, Remy," she said, her voice barely a whisper, and then she dropped her gaze, unable to hold eye contact with him for that long.

A few silent seconds later, she felt his arm curl around her upper body, and she let her head fall onto his shoulder. He rested his cheek against the top of her head, and she could feel his slow breaths gently blowing her hair. They stayed like that for a few minutes, and for the first time since coming face to face with Beelzebub, Sophie began to feel herself breathe again.

As she relaxed, she felt him shift, and then suddenly they were lying down, Sophie's head resting where his arm met his shoulder, and her face turned up towards his as he looked down at her. His lips ghosted across her forehead, and Sophie supposed that the simple motion should have sent little jolts of electricity through her body. But instead, her eyes closed, and she felt an overwhelming sense of security. Like she could not possibly be anywhere safer, except for maybe with Sam and Dean.

And then his lips moved gently across her forehead. His voice was just a whisper, but she heard every word as clear as if he had spoken it directly to her heart.

"And I'm really glad you're my human, Sophie."

**This chapter is a little wordy and filler-y, but I didn't have as much time to edit as I usually do, and I really wanted to get this up for you guys. Thank you for every review, favorite, follow, or view. Y'all are so very much appreciated. More soon! ~ Lacey :)**


	69. Chapter 69: Too Cute For Tough Love

_Chapter 69: Too Cute For Tough Love_

The next couple of days were hard.

For the first time in her life, Sophie asked Dean if she could skip school, and he told her that she could without throwing her any remarks about how she was finally acting like a normal kid. Because she wasn't acting like a normal kid. She was acting like a kid who had just experienced psychological trauma at the hands of a sadistic demon.

As far as the rest of the world knew, however, she was just suffering from a really bad flu. Remy had gone back and managed to alter the minds of everyone at the cross country meet to convince them that Sophie had never even come with them on the trip, instead staying home to nurse a really terrible fever and sore throat. And it had worked. The only person at school who knew the truth was Jack, and it wasn't like he was going to say anything. He had called her a few times and they'd spoken, but Dean still wasn't letting him come to the bunker and he also wasn't letting Sophie leave the bunker, so they hadn't seen each other.

Sophie was secretly glad that she couldn't see Jack. Because she knew she'd reached the end of the line when it came to keeping Remy a secret from him. The angel was too big a part of her life now to withhold that information from her boyfriend. She knew she had to tell him, and so naturally, she was alright with putting it off for a few more days.

As for everything else, Sophie played it off like she was fine. She conversed with Sam and Dean and lounged around the bunker in her pajamas, doing homework that Jamie had e-mailed to her or reading books. She even watched some TV and did a little cleaning around the bunker, because she knew Sam and Dean weren't exactly the best housekeepers.

But the Winchester brothers knew something was very wrong. She wasn't eating anything; she wasn't even drinking coffee. And she looked exhausted, shadows perpetually under her eyes. Sam and Dean were both worried, but there wasn't much they could do in terms of helping her. It felt like the whole Bash situation all over again—Sam and Dean were doomed to watch as she struggled to heal and move past the whole situation.

Dean had gone so far as to pray to Remy and ask if he could grant Sophie some peace of mind, or at least a little bit of rest. But Remy just gave Dean a sad look and told him what he already knew—for every night of artificial sleep Sophie got, he'd just be restarting the cycle of her insomnia.

This whole situation just sucked.

Dean knew deep down that he couldn't stop looking for a way to stop Beelzebub. The only other option was allowing the world to be overtaken by the manifestation of pure evil, and of course he couldn't allow that. But he also couldn't allow Sophie to be put in any more danger, and he had no idea how to keep her safe and also save the world.

He hadn't been lying. He was selfish enough to risk the world to keep her alive. But that didn't stop him from thinking about a way to have his cake and eat it too.

* * *

On the fourth night after the incident, Sam and Dean were drinking some beers in the main room while Sophie was already in bed. The two of them hadn't talked a lot since the day of Beelzebub's attack, and most of their conversation had been strictly about Sophie.

It was both of their faults. Sam didn't want to jump the gun on opening up the conversation again about continuing their search for a translation for the Ritual of Fire, and Dean didn't want to admit he'd been acting rashly. But it was starting to get to the point where they couldn't ignore the elephant in the room, so when Dean cleared his throat uncomfortably, Sam knew they were finally going to have a real conversation.

"So, uh, I've been thinking," Dean started. "And, I know that we can't just pretend Beelzebub doesn't exist."

Sam looked up, taking another drink of his beer but not saying anything else.

Dean, seeing that his brother wasn't going to say anything, grudgingly continued. "I know that this thing with Soph can't change the fact that we need to do everything we can to stop the son of a bitch."

Sam set his beer down, looking mildly relieved. "I figured you'd come around."

"Yeah, yeah, spare me the 'I told you so' speech. Right now we need to figure out how we're moving forward."

Sam let out a long breath. "I know. We need to figure out how he was able to find her."

Dean just shook his head. "You know that she can't leave this bunker until we figure that out, right? At least, not by herself. She can't go back to school, not until we've got Beelzebub nailed to the wall."

Sam took another drink. "I don't know. She's got us, she's got Remy. We could ask Cas if there's anything else—"

"Yeah, yeah, sure, we'll _try_," Dean said, waving his words away. "But until we know how he found her, she stays here. We tell the school she got mono or something, there's only a couple weeks until Christmas break anyway, she can do work from home until then. And it'll buy us some time to figure this all out without her risking her life."

Sam looked at him closely for a moment, and then he just nodded, heaviness in his hazel eyes. "You know what the saddest part about this is?" he asked. Dean just looked at him. "For the first time, she won't even fight us on this," Sam said. "She's scared out of her mind."

Dean nodded, running a hand over his face. "That son of a bitch is going to regret that he ever crawled out of Hell," he muttered.

Sam nodded. "You didn't see her, right when Remy brought her here," he said in a low voice. "I can't stop thinking about it. It was almost worse than when Cas brought her back after the Bash, because I knew that Cas could fix her then. But this time…he was so inside of her head."

"I should've been there," Dean said, thinking back to that day. He still hadn't forgiven himself for being in Angela's bed while his daughter was staring death in the face.

"It was bad timing," Sam admitted. "But it also wasn't your fault. You can't beat yourself up too much about it." Then he reconsidered. "But you can beat yourself up about _who _you slept with. Because I still think that's an issue."

Dean waved his brother's remarks away. "Look, I shouldn't have forgotten to charge my phone, there's no way around that. I'm just glad that you were there for her."

Sam nodded. "Me too."

Dean let out a long breath. "I'm gonna turn in for the night. Tomorrow I think I'm going to visit our favorite resident captive demon and try to squeeze some information out of her. Maybe she can tell us how Beelzebub found Sophie."

Sam drained the rest of his beer and nodded. "To be honest, I'd almost forgotten Taylor's still down there."

"This is how far we've come," Dean commented sardonically. "We're so used to this crap that we forget we're harboring the spawn of Satan under our roof. Dad'd be so proud."

Sam was quiet for a moment. "He probably would be," he said after a moment. "At least, he'd be proud of what you've done with Sophie, I think. Maybe. Probably."

Dean couldn't help but give a small grin. It didn't quite reach his eyes, but it was close. "Yeah. Maybe. Probably."

He stood up and grabbed Sam's empty beer bottle, and he tossed it along with his in the trash as he walked out of the main room and towards his own bedroom. He yanked off his flannel shirt, left on his undershirt, and threw his socks, shoes, and pants into the corner of his room. Then he collapsed into his bed, listened as Sam shuffled his way to his own bedroom, and then he reached over and turned off the lamp that sat on his bedside table.

Slowly, he sunk into the uneasy sleep he was all too accustomed to.

* * *

Sophie was running.

A part of her knew it was a dream, but the human part of her that desperately needed rest forced her body to stay asleep. So her dream self kept running deeper and deeper into the woods, and she wasn't quite sure what she was running towards. She just knew that she needed to run.

Suddenly, Remy was there, his face staring at hers in grave concern. "What are you doing?" he asked. "You've got to go. Beelzebub is—"

And then a bright light filled her vision, and when it dimmed, Sophie saw Remy lying dead on the ground, blood streaming from a stab wound in his back. She screamed, dropping to the ground and shaking him. "Remy!" she yelled. "Remy, wake up! I need you, wake up!"

She would've stayed there with him, but a hand grabbed the collar of her shirt and pulled her off of the lifeless form of her friend. She turned to see Beelzebub standing there, blood dripping thickly off of _synkomidí̱_, grinning at her darkly. "So glad you could join me, my darling," he said slickly. "Now that we've gotten rid of your pesky pet angel, we can get down to business."

Sophie found that she had no voice, even though she wanted to scream and yell at him with everything inside of her. But every time she tried to say something, it got stuck in her throat. Beelzebub laughed at her, grabbing her by the hair and yanking her up so that she was face to face with him.

"Still so beautiful," Beelzebub sighed, and she cringed as his fingers found her face again, in the exact same position they had in real life. They made a trail from her cheek to her hairline, and then they disappeared into her strawberry blonde tresses. "I've taken my fair share of women, likely some far better than you…but for some reason, I feel like you would be the sweetest. I wasn't lying, darling Sophia. We would make sweet, dark magic."

Her breath was gone. She couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't do anything as he played with her hair and stroked her skin. All she could process was an overwhelming need to both breathe and throw up, and she didn't know how on earth she was going to manage either or both of those.

And then he shrugged. "But unfortunately, I'm all work, no play nowadays."

And he took _synkomidí̱_ and ran it through her body without a second thought.

She gasped and sat up in bed, a scream trapped in her throat. She flailed around under the sheets for a few moments before realizing that she was no longer in the woods, and that she was alive and safe. She was shaking like a leaf, and despite the fact that she was underneath a comforter and two blankets, she was freezing cold.

A quick glance over at the clock next to her bed told her it was three in the morning, and she groaned when she realized she'd only gotten an hour and a half of sleep. Tears sprung to her eyes. This was her fourth night of no sleep, and it was really starting to take its toll on her.

The dreams had been happening every night, always the same, except each time Beelzebub had killed someone different. She'd seen Sam and Dean get slaughtered in front of her eyes, and Cas, and Charlie, and Jack, and now Remy. It was unbearable, and each time she could do nothing to stop it or change it. And then after that, he'd always grab her, and touch her, and whisper awful things into her ear, and then he'd stab her.

She was so, so tired. She could feel the exhaustion deep in her bones, and her mind and body urgently needed some rest, but her mind just wouldn't let her get even a couple hours of nightmare-free sleep.

Despite trying to hold them back, desperate tears began to fall down her face, and she tried to slow them as she attempted to fall back asleep. She laid there for thirty minutes, shaking and crying and tossing and turning, but she could hear every little noise and creak in the bunker, and she could still see Beelzebub's bloodthirsty blue eyes every time she closed her eyes, and finally, she couldn't take it anymore.

Slowly, she swung her feet out of the bed and pulled herself up. She hugged herself, trying to warm up her body a little bit, and almost robotically, like she wasn't programmed to do anything else, she left her room and padded softly down the hall until she reached a familiar door.

She hesitated for a moment, feeling foolish and juvenile. She was sixteen. She shouldn't have to seek comfort from scary dreams at sixteen. But then she thought about going back to her dark room and all of the nightmares that awaited her there, and she knew she just couldn't survive another sleepless night. She simply didn't have it in her to go through another day trying to pretend she was okay when in reality she was bone-tired and about to lose her mind.

So she turned the doorknob and stepped inside the room.

The light from the hallway stretched through the dark room and fell upon a man splayed out on top of the mattress, snoring gently and tangled up in all of the sheets like a giant toddler. Sophie didn't want to go over and shake his shoulder, but when the light from the hall hit his face, he jolted awake, grabbing for some sort of weapon under his pillow.

As he lifted up a gun, his eyes focused in on Sophie, and he looked confused. He immediately lowered the gun and frowned sleepily. "Soph? What's going on?" When she didn't answer right away, he straightened up, slightly more awake, and he took a good look at her. She was hugging herself tightly, and she was despite her efforts to warm herself up, she was still shivering. "What happened?"

She bit her quivering lip in an effort to keep from sobbing in front of her father. "The nightmares won't stop," she choked out. "I haven't slept in days…. I'm sorry, I don't know what to do, I'm just so tired, and…and…." Her explanation was cut off by the beginning of an involuntary sob, and her hand flew to her mouth, almost in surprise, as she tried to keep the rest from coming out. She was already humiliated by coming to him in the middle of the night. The last thing she needed to do was breakdown completely.

Dean stared at her with heavy eyes for a few moments, and then he let out a long breath. "C'mere," he finally said.

She walked over to the side of his bed, and he patted the spot next to him. Without even thinking, she slid in next to him, and he removed some of the sheets from his body and handed them off to her along with his second pillow. As she snuggled down into the pillow, he turned his body and looked at her. The bags under her eyes were practically purple, and her eyes were shining with hopeless tears, and her hair was messed up, and she just looked so defeated that Dean probably would have sold his soul all over again just to grant her some peace.

He kissed her gently on the forehead. "You're safe here with me, kiddo," he told her, his voice both rough with sleep and soft with understanding. "Get some sleep. Nothing's getting you tonight, or ever. Not while I'm here."

She blinked, looking up at him, and it looked like the tears had stopped building up in her eyes. She gave him an exhausted, barely-there twitch of the lips, her sad attempt at a grin, but it was enough for him. "Thanks, Dad," she whispered.

He turned back around and pulled the remainder of the covers over his body, and he felt Sophie's forehead lean gently against his back. After a few minutes of Sophie's quick breathing and trembling, he heard her breaths begin to come out slow and steady, and then after another few minutes, she was still.

He grinned, closed his eyes, and soon fell back to sleep.

* * *

It hadn't been a perfect night's sleep.

Dean had woken up a few times to hear Sophie softly whimpering and turning around in his bed, but after a couple moments of rubbing her back and talking to her in a low voice, she'd slip back into a quiet, restful sleep.

So no, it hadn't been perfect. But when Sophie woke up at ten in the morning, looking around Dean's empty room and marveling at how she'd somehow managed to get more than just a few detached hours of sleep, she felt like she'd just won the most hard-fought battle of her life.

She sat up and stretched, looking over at the clock and grinning. Man, it felt so good to be well-rested for once. Being so exhausted all the time had left a perpetually nauseous feeling in her stomach. She hadn't had more than a couple bites to eat per day, and she'd steered clear of coffee so that the caffeine didn't keep her more awake than she already was.

She slid out of Dean's bed, staring at it as she redid her ponytail. Then she took a deep breath and made up the bed, thinking that it was probably the first time his bed had ever been made since the beginning of time. Then she straightened out her pajama shirt, rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, and made her way out of the door.

Sam and Dean were sitting in the main room, fully dressed and staring at a laptop. She heard a female voice come out of the computer. "Sure, Dean, like I _actually_ stopped looking for a translator when you asked me to. C'mon, bro, you know me, and you're not that dumb," a sarcastic voice quipped lightly. "Listen, I've gotta catch a bus in five minutes and I need to make sure I get out the right amount of currency. You two sit tight and watch out for my bitchette."

Sam closed the laptop. "That's that then," he said, sounding happy.

"Was that Charlie?" Sophie asked, shuffling into the room.

Immediately, Sam and Dean turned to look at her, surprised to see that she was looking as chipper as she was. "Yeah, just checking up on her," Sam said. "How're you feeling?"

Sophie gave a slightly relieved grin. "Like I actually got a few hours of sleep last night," she said.

Both of them looked relieved as well. "That's great," Sam said, smiling at her. "I'm glad."

She nodded, and then a delightful smell hit her nose. "Did you guys make coffee?"

Dean's eyes lit up, as did Sam's. "So you're back to wanting coffee?" Sam said.

Sophie nodded. "I've missed it," she admitted.

"Thank God," Dean said, and when she looked over at him she saw that he was smiling at her. "I was starting to get really worried."

Sophie smirked. "The nightmares and lack of appetite and hobo wardrobe weren't freaking you out, but I don't drink coffee one day and your fatherly concern radar is off the charts."

"Your caffeine habits don't lie, kiddo," Dean pointed out.

Sam laughed. "Because I'm the most courteous one here, I'll run and get you a cup. And something to eat. Which you're going to actually have to eat."

"You're my hero, Sam," Sophie sighed.

He gave her shoulder a quick squeeze as walked by her on the way to the kitchen, and she smiled in surprise as he placed a short kiss on her head before disappearing into the other room.

When she looked at Dean, she saw that he was grinning. "So you slept better last night?"

She nodded. "Yeah. I'm definitely not at the point where I'm dreaming about sugarplum fairies or anything, but much better." Then she gave him a slightly sheepish look. "Um, thanks for letting me sort of crash with you last night, and for, you know, not kicking me out when I kept waking you up," she said, a little awkwardly. He responded to her discomfort with an amused grin, and she kept talking quickly and a little nervously. "I think I was sort of out of it, I wouldn't usually do anything like that, I guess I was just kind of spooked and I was tired and I thought that—"

"Sophie," Dean stopped her with a small chuckle. "Just stop. I didn't mind. I _don't _mind. You can crash with me whenever. I'm just glad you finally got some sleep. You needed it."

She nodded. "Yeah, I guess I did." She cracked a grin. "Also, you've been holding out on me. How come we can't afford to buy a Keurig but you manage to have a memory foam mattress?"

Dean scoffed. "I need back support."

"Sure, old man," Sophie teased, and Dean opened his mouth to retaliate as Sam walked in with a fresh mug of coffee and a bowl of Cheerios.

"Dean, you finally told her about those grown-up diapers you've been thinking of getting?" Sam asked, setting the mug and bowl down in front of Sophie.

Dean would have been a lot more annoyed at Sam's dig at him if he hadn't heard the little laugh come out of Sophie's mouth. He'd take any and all old man jokes directed at him if she would just laugh more often. So he shook his head. "You're a regular comedian, Sam. It's a shame you don't have your own show."

"I try," Sam said, sitting down and looking over at Sophie. It was nice to see her like this, much closer to her regular self than she had been the last couple of days.

Sophie took a long drink of coffee, and then she sat back in her chair, a content grin on her face. "Oh, boy, how I've missed this."

Dean snorted. "Should Sam and I leave the room, give you two a little alone time."

"Could you? We have so much to catch up on." The Winchester brothers both laughed, which made Sophie smile. She glanced at the laptop they'd been chatting on before she walked in. "So, um, how's Charlie?"

"She's good," Sam said. "She actually really likes the Middle East. Lots of rich culture and bright colors."

She gave a sideways glance at Dean. "So…you didn't tell her to stop looking?"

Dean had that look that he wore whenever he was about to admit that he'd been wrong, which was not a look that he wore very often. "I did, at first," he admitted. "But I told her today I didn't mean it. I was just…angry about that son of a bitch finding you, and I—"

"You overreacted," Sophie finished for him.

He simply grumbled unintelligibly in admittance.

She nodded. "Well, I'm glad we're in agreement for once." Then a sad look crossed over her face. "But I'm guessing you're not going to let me do anything until you figure out how the heck Beelzebub managed to find me in the middle of freaking nowhere."

"There's only a couple weeks until Christmas break," Sam reasoned. "If we keep you out of school until then, you can still manage all your work here until school starts back in January. And then hopefully by then we'll have something figured out."

A part of Sophie wanted to argue with them and try to make them let her keep going to school. But a larger part of her was still really shaken up by her faceoff with their current mortal enemy, and she wasn't ready for that to happen again. And she wasn't ready to expose her entire school to that kind of danger either. So she just nodded. "Yeah. Sure. Makes sense."

Sam and Dean exchanged looks. The Sophie they knew wouldn't have caved in so easily, and while they were glad she wasn't going to put up a fight when it came to her safety, it still made them both a little sad.

She saw their expressions, and gave them looks. "Hey, I'm not letting you guys off _that _easy. We better find a way to get me back in school by the second semester or I'm raising hell."

Sam grinned with pride and Dean snorted. "You're drinking coffee again and making threats so you can go back to school. I'm glad you're back, sweetheart."

She shrugged and stood up. "Me too. But I've got an essay to write on _Invisible Man_ that I need to email in by midnight, so I need to grab my laptop and get started on that." She grabbed her mug and turned to go to the kitchen.

"Geek!" Dean called to her.

"Old man!" she called back over her shoulder before disappearing around the corner.

Dean looked over at Sam, smirking. "And you thought that memory foam mattress was a waste of money. One night of sleep and she's acting a little like herself again."

Sam raised an eyebrow. "She slept with you last night?"

Dean nodded. "She came in around three or something, and she was a mess and going on about nightmares and I just… didn't know what else to do."

"Well I'm just glad she got some rest," Sam said, and then he grinned. "Could you imagine what Dad would've done if one of us had crawled into bed with him when we had a nightmare?"

Dean chuckled. "Probably would've pushed us out, tossed us a shotgun, and told us that's all we should need to not be scared."

Sam laughed. "Tough love. His personal favorite."

Dean looked over Sam's shoulder, where Sophie had disappeared. "Yeah, well, she's too cute for tough love."

"Definitely," Sam agreed. "But, uh, Dean, now that she's not all…comatose and coffee deprived…maybe you should tell her about you sleeping with Angela."

Dean looked at him like he was crazy. "Are you insane?" he snapped shortly. "It was a onetime deal. She doesn't have to know anything ever happened."

"Dean, you slept with April Levin's mother," Sam said slowly.

"So?" Dean repeated, annoyed. "Angela and I are two consenting adults who are both on the same page—it was just sex, and there's no reason to bring our kids into it."

"I don't know," Sam said, shaking his head. "I just think Sophie deserves to know where you were while she was recovering from a near-fatal confrontation with Beelzebub."

Dean shook his head. "Ain't happening," he declared.

"Dean," Sam said sternly, like he was scolding a child. "Keeping things from her never ends well. I mean, think about how bad it was when she found out about Beelzebub."

"Well yeah, Sam, but I'm pretty sure learning about my deal with a powerful demon is a little bit different than learning about me sleeping with someone."

"Who are you sleeping with?"

Dean and Sam whipped their heads in the direction of Sophie's voice. She had a confused look on her face, her laptop and copy of _Invisible Man_ in her hands, reading glasses perched on her nose. Dean stared at her, open mouthed and unable to say anything, and Sam just sat back in his chair, 'I told you so' written all over his face.

"Uh," Dean started dumbly. "A woman."

"Oh, shoot, I had all my money on Cas," she snapped sarcastically, annoyed. "C'mon, Dad, I know you're not a monk, you don't have to hide the fact that you're sleeping with someone from me."

"Look, I'm not sleeping with someone," Dean muttered. "I _slept_ with someone. Once. It was a onetime thing. That's it."

She sat down at the table, opening up her laptop and looking over the top of it at her dad. "Well, who? You guys haven't left Lebanon in a little while, so it's gotta be someone from around here. Do I know her? Is she pretty?" She batted her eyelashes. "Am I going to have new mommy?"

"Just stop it," Dean told her, cringing. "You're making this worse and you don't even know."

"Seriously, who is it?" Sophie asked.

"Who I sleep with is none of your business," Dean told her sharply.

She looked a little bit taken aback. "Are you serious?" she asked. "If it was only a onetime thing it shouldn't be a big deal to tell me."

At this point, Dean knew that Sophie would keep hounding him until he told her, and he didn't want this to be an issue that came up later on down the line. "I'll tell you, but you need to not hate me after I tell you."

At that, Sophie looked a little concerned. "Oh no. Did you sleep with one of my teachers? Was it Ms. Deerfield?" She started to look distressed. "No, Dad, I really like Ms. Deerfield, she's so nice and I really don't want her hating me, or worse, trying to use me to get you to keep sleeping with her, how could you put me in this position—"

"It was April Levin's mom," Dean blurted out.

Sophie just stared at him, eyes wide with shock. "You're joking, right?"

"No," Dean admitted, cringing slightly.

She was quiet for a long moment that seemed to last forever to Dean. Then she slowly said, "Did you _know _that it was April's mom?" she asked, clearly hopeful that he hadn't known.

But he just nodded. "Yeah…I kind of did."

"She's…she's divorced, right?" Sophie asked, feeling a little lightheaded.

"Yes, definitely," Dean replied quickly. "I don't do the whole homewrecking thing. I'm not about that."

"But you're about sleeping with the mom of the girl at school who hates me?" Sophie shot at him.

Dean looked cornered, as he should have. "I didn't mean to—"

But he was cut off by Sophie, whose eyes had doubled in size. "Oh my God! Is that what you were doing when Remy brought me here after Beelzebub? Is that why you weren't here? You were screwing April's mom?"

Dean winced. He deserved that. "I didn't _know_—"

"Yeah, okay," Sophie said, clearly upset, standing back up from the table. "I think I'm actually going to go do my essay in my room. Or maybe throw up a little."

"Soph, I'm sorry," Dean said in resignation. "It really meant nothing. I wish I hadn't done it, I wish I'd been there for you."

Sophie didn't answer for a moment. She looked over at Sam, who had been watching the exchange a little uncomfortably, and then she looked back at Dean. "I know," she said, surprising Dean. "And I don't hate you. Maybe it's because of everything that's happened lately, but it's hard to be pissed at you." Dean felt relieved for a moment, but then she kept talking. "But that doesn't mean I'm okay with this. Next time you decide you need some sex, I think I actually _would _rather you go to Cas than April's mom. If April finds out about this, my life at school is over."

Then she turned on her heel and started to stomp back out of the room. She paused before she turned the corner, and then she looked back at Dean. "That Keurig we're too broke to buy? That might be a good start to making up for this." Then she turned back around and disappeared down the hall to her room. A few moments later, Dean heard her door shut loudly.

He blew out a long breath. "Well. That could have been worse," he admitted. "We just need to hit up one more bar than usual on our next hunt, hustle one more pair of dumbasses to get enough cash for her dumb coffee thing, and we're golden."

"See what happens when you tell the truth?" Sam told him. "Now she's a little upset, and probably won't trust any of your romantic decisions for the next couple of years, but at least she's not storming out of here and driving to North Carolina." A grin snuck up on Sam's face. "I think this is a valuable life lesson for you, Dean."

"Shut up," Dean said, rubbing his hands over his face. "God, it's not even noon yet and I feel like I just ran a marathon."

"Dude, you don't even know what running a mile feels like," Sam pointed out.

Dean ignored him. "You know what, I'm going to go have that chat with Taylor now," he said, making sure his voice sounded as deep and masculine as he could without it being overwrought. "See if she can tell us anything about how Beelzebub found Sophie."

"I'm coming, too," Sam said automatically, standing up slowly from his seat. "We could use all the manpower we can get on this one. She's a tough nut to crack."

"Fine, whatever," Dean said. "Just go make sure Soph's occupied for a while. I don't want her coming down while we're in there."

"Shouldn't be that hard," Sam replied. "She hates it when we go in and see her."

"Yeah, well, I especially don't want her coming down today," Dean said. "She's already angry with me about Angela. This would just make it worse."

"I'll talk to her," Sam finally agreed. "Just…let's just remember that we're the humans here, okay?"

Dean's eyes darkened. "You can be the human, Sam. I'm going to be the guy who does whatever it takes to figure out how the hell the most dangerous demon currently topside is keeping tabs on my kid. The one that got close enough to her to tell her how good her hair smelled."

Sam held Dean's gaze for a few moments, and then he just nodded. "We do what we have to do, then."

Dean nodded back at him. "We do what we have to do."

**I'm sorry if this chapter was a little all over the place, I moved on Wednesday and I've been running around like a madman trying to get everything I need together, so I couldn't devote as much time to editing as I wanted. Fingers crossed for a Wednesday update...but I don't know.**

**Also, to all of you curious/worried about this whole Jack vs. Remy situation (I love that in a review someone called them 'Jophie', because that's adorable)... I can honestly say that when I started this I didn't expect Remy to be as much of a key player as he's become. It all happened pretty organically. I'm curious as to who you're all rooting for, though, because at this point, it's pretty up in the air for me. I haven't finished writing this story all the way, but I've pretty much planned everything out..._except_ for the direction of Sophie's romantic life. I have an idea of what I might do, but it's not set in stone. So if ya want, let me know what you think!**

**Y'all rock, but you know that already ~ Lacey :)**


	70. Chapter 70: Downright Supernatural

_Chapter 70: Downright Supernatural_

The laughter filled Dean's ears.

It was all he could focus on as he carved his blade into Taylor's stomach. The sound was haunting, sometimes stretching into a scream as he twisted the knife, and then when he relented the laughter would die back down to a steady maniacal laugh. It was sickening to him, but more sickening to him was the idea of him not finding out how Beelzebub was keeping track of his daughter, so he hardened his heart to the horror of his actions and continued.

"How did Beelzebub find her?" he yelled at Taylor again, pushing the knife deeper into her, and her laugh morphed into a scream of agony.

He'd been there for too long, if the sound of her pain was becoming nothing more than background noise in his mind.

He pulled the knife out to give her a chance to answer, and she slumped over, breathing deeply as blood poured out from her torso. She grinned weakly at Dean. "I hope he had fun with your pretty little girl," she finally said, her voice slow and taunting. "He usually has fun with the girls before he kills them."

Dean launched himself at her again, but he felt a hand grab his shoulder, and he turned to see Sam's face close to his. "Take a walk, man," his brother said sternly.

Dean shoved Sam away from him, turning back to Taylor, bloody blade in hand. "You know," he snarled. "You know how he found her."

"It's simple, if you think about it," she said, eyes glinting with knowledge she refused to share. "It's right there in front of your face."

"_How_?" he yelled.

She just snorted. "I'm not telling you anything unless I get something in return."

Dean moved the knife to her neck. "You get to live," he said in a low voice. "Trust me, that's a damn good gift for a piece of crap like you."

She glared at Dean for a long moment, glancing once at the knife at her neck, but then her eyes darkened and she gave Dean a sick grin. "You gotta do better than that, babe," she said slickly.

In a rage, Dean went to stab her through the heart, but again was held back by his brother. "Dean," Sam said in a low voice. "You need to go take a walk." Dean was still breathing deeply, glaring at a smiling Taylor with murder in his eyes. "_Now_," Sam insisted.

Dean shook Sam's hands off of him, straightening his shirt and glaring at his brother, but making no more moves towards Taylor. "This ain't over, _babe_," he said to her, and she smirked in response. Then he looked at Sam. "Give her hell."

Sam nodded tersely, and Dean turned and stormed out of the room.

One day, he was going to kill that bitch. But for now…she was going to help them keep Sophie alive.

Dean just hoped that they could figure out how to do that before he dipped back into the horrible creature that he'd been post-resurrection from Hell and became a man devoid of all sense of humanity.

* * *

Sophie had a hard time writing her essay when she knew her dad and her uncle were torturing Taylor in such close proximity.

If this had been a week ago, Sophie might have snuck down and tried to see what was going on. After all, while torture, violence, or brutality of any sort usually made her feel sort of nauseous when it wasn't used for self defense, she was endlessly curious about Taylor and everything she might know, especially now that the whole Beelzebub issue was at the forefront.

But right now, Sophie was a complete baby, afraid of anything and everything. It made her feel dumb and weak, because she was a Winchester, and Winchesters weren't supposed to get scared like this. They were supposed to take the punches and then bounce back, ready to go save some lives at the drop of a hat.

But Sophie was still stuck in this weird gray area where she was scared for herself, scared for Dean and Sam, scared for Charlie, scared for pretty much everyone. She was just scared, plain and simple. And then she felt guilty for being scared, which just made her even more scared, and it was this sick, never-ending cycle of fear.

So she steered clear of Taylor, as curious as she was. The last time she spoke with the demon, she ended up nearly killing herself in a car accident. Clearly, the bitch was bad news.

Sophie was about five hundred words into her essay when she heard a soft fluttering of wings, and then there was a voice hovering over her shoulder. "You slept better last night."

She whipped her head around to see Remy, his face far closer to hers than she was anticipating. She jerked back from him, scooting backwards on her bed. "We're getting you a cell phone," she finally said, after her heart stopped jumping in surprise. "That way you can call me before you drop by."

"Well that's no fun," Remy said, his face transforming into what Sophie could only describe as a sexy pout, which was a facial expression she did not know could be made by men.

"You know what else is no fun? A heart attack. Which is what I'm going to have if you keep popping up like this."

Remy grinned. "Well, judging by the fact that you're annoying again, I'll take it that you _did _sleep better last night."

"A little," she said. "It was no eight hours, but…it was better."

"Yeah, well, it doesn't happen overnight," Remy said, splaying out on her bed, putting his hands behind his head.

Sophie raised an eyebrow. "No, please, make yourself comfortable, it's not like you're being very invasive of my privacy right now," she noted.

"Kind of comes with the territory when my soul is connected to yours," he pointed out.

She sighed, leaning back on the bed so that his feet were by her head and her feet were by his head, her essay forgotten on the laptop sitting between them. "I guess," she said. She was silent for a moment, staring at the ceiling. "So what brings you to my neck of the woods?" she asked. "Weird static on the guardian angel radio? A disturbance in the force, if you will?"

"I missed you," he said plainly.

Sophie shifted her weight and lifted her head, so that she was looking straight at him. "Huh?"

"You asked me a question, I gave you an answer," Remy said flippantly, without looking at her.

Her facial expression was one of utter confusion. "But you just said yourself, you're constantly connected to me. You can't possibly miss me when you can always sense me."

He shrugged nonchalantly. "I miss seeing you," he said. "I miss you giving me a hard time. I miss your company. You may not believe this, Ace, but you are very entertaining company. In all my years, and out of all my charges, you are the only one I've genuinely enjoyed being around." Sophie was quiet, unsure of how to respond, and after a long gap of silence, he continued. "It's funny, because your soul is so peaceful and warm and kind and steady that it gives off this homely grandmother vibe. Sweet and adorable, but not exactly the most interesting thing in the world. But in real life, when your soul is combined with your mind, you're much more compelling. And much better looking, too, might I add."

Sophie was pretty sure she was blushing, but she wasn't sure. "Well, you're…compelling, too, I guess," she replied, somewhat awkwardly.

Remy snorted. "Of course I'm compelling. I'm an angel."

Sophie laughed, and then she frowned. "Wait, back up. Did you just call me a homely grandmother?"

"No, I said you have the _soul _of a homely grandmother. It's much different."

Sophie just sighed. "Well, that would make sense I guess. God forbid I have the soul of a warrior, like my dad. It'd be nice to not be so afraid all the time."

Remy sat up a little bit, his face filled with an expression of thoughtfulness. "I'd say you're a warrior by nurture, not by nature. Just as effective, and possibly more so, than being born a hardened warrior." Then he grinned. "And if you think Dean doesn't walk around with fear and insecurity in his heart at all times, then you are not the intelligent girl I know you to be."

"Well, sure," Sophie allowed, "but he doesn't let it cripple him."

Remy frowned. "You're not giving yourself enough credit, Ace. You've been living this life for what, a little over a year? He's been living it his whole life. Of course you're a little more susceptible to fear. It's only natural."

"But nothing about the world is natural anymore, Remy," Sophie sighed. "In fact, I'd argue it's downright _supernatural_."

He smirked. "Maybe. But if you ask me, you're a natural at the supernatural."

She was quiet for a moment, and then she asked what had been on her mind for a while. "Hey Remy? Can you…umm…," she trailed for a moment, clearing her throat, "can you see my nightmares? The ones I've been having?"

She was a little surprised when he took so long to answer. She looked at him and couldn't quite see his face from that angle, with her head on her pillow and his head lying at the foot of her bed. Finally, he just said, "Yeah."

She blushed and felt her chest seize up nervously. That meant he could see the people she saw die, he could hear the words Beelzebub would whisper into her ear, each more threatening than the one before. "Oh," she said in a small voice. "I was kind of afraid of that."

"I want to take them all away from you," Remy said tensely. "It's my first instinct. But…I know if you don't deal with them, they'll never truly go away."

"I know," Sophie said softly. "It just sucks. I didn't ask for this."

"I want to murder him," Remy said in an oddly emotionless voice, the way one might say 'I want to go to the grocery store' or 'I want to see what's playing at the movie theater tonight.' He said it like it was a given fact, like the most natural thing in the world. "I want him to suffer for the pain he caused you, for the…the _disgusting_ things he said to you."

Sophie found herself grinning, even though she was pretty sure it didn't reach her eyes. "Is that protectiveness I hear from you, Eremiel?"

Remy sat up on his elbows, looking at her piercingly. "Of course you hear protectiveness from me," he said in a serious voice, almost confused that she had used a joking tone. For the first time, he reminded her of Cas. "My sole existence is to protect you, and I very nearly failed. Why wouldn't my tone indicate that?"

"I…nothing," Sophie said, shaking her head. "Never mind." After another moment of quiet, she gave a tired little chuckle. "It's kind of funny. I have you, my dad, Sam, and even Cas looking out for me, protecting me, doing everything in their power to keep me safe…and I _still_ manage to almost get killed every other time I walk out the door. It's infuriating."

Remy chuckled in response. "_You _think it's infuriating? Try being the one charged with keeping you alive." Then his tone grew a little more serious. "It's all just part of being a Winchester, Sophie."

She sighed. "Maybe." She rolled over and grabbed her laptop, sitting it on her stomach.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Writing an essay. I'm faking that I have mono because Dad and Sam say it's too dangerous to go back to school right now, so I'm doing all my assignments from my bed."

"Are you serious?" Remy asked. "You have the pleasure of my undivided attention, and you decide to do homework?"

"You're such a narcissist sometimes," Sophie accused sharply.

"It's not narcissism if you're genuinely better than other people," Remy shot back.

Sophie rolled her eyes. "You're an asshole," she stated.

"Just like you like me."

She sighed.

They stayed there for a long while, chatting while Sophie absent-mindedly tried to finish her essay. She had almost forgotten how easily she and Remy were able to talk to each other, but after nearly two hours of solid conversation and banter, she couldn't deny that maybe she had been severely underutilizing their friendship. Or whatever it was that they had.

He was there so long that she almost forgot that Sam and Dean were still around.

Almost.

When the door to her room opened, Sophie and Remy were in the same positions that they had been in for hours, lying in opposite directions on her bed with the laptop sitting between them, her essay forgotten. Dean poked his head in to check on her, and when he saw Remy, he strode in with his eyes narrowed. "Hey!" he barked. "What's going on here?"

Sophie jumped slightly at his sudden entrance, but when she saw him she gave him an annoyed look. "Well, clearly, we're having sex," she told him, her voice laced with heavy sarcasm as she gestured towards their fully clothed, not even remotely close to touching bodies.

Remy chuckled, but Dean didn't look all that amused. He glared at Remy. "What are you doing here?"

Before Remy could respond, Sophie cut him off. "It's high time you learned how to knock," she told her father, standing up from the bed, grabbing his wrist, and dragging him back towards her door. "See?" she asked, holding his hand up with her own and banging it haphazardly against the door to her room as he rolled his eyes. "It's really pretty simple, I'm sure with a little bit of practice you can get the hang of it."

"I wouldn't _have _to knock if you didn't have a boy in your bed every time I open the door," Dean grumbled, taking his hand out of Sophie's grasp. Then he turned to Remy. "Seriously, what are you doing here?"

"Just a little human-guardian angel bonding time," Remy said, grey-green eyes bright with mischief. "You know the drill. We braided each other's hair, talked about all the school gossip, screwed each other senseless until we saw stars and—"

"_Get. Out. Of. My. Batcave!_"

With a wink and a fluttering of wings, Remy was gone.

Sophie pouted and glared at Dean. "We were having a good time," she whined.

"Oh, were you?" Dean asked. "Good enough to see stars?"

"I realize that this might be hard for you to understand," Sophie said slowly, "but it's possible for me to have a friend that is a guy without wanting more than that. And then if you throw in the fact that he's an _angel_… It's ridiculous that you'd even be worried about that."

"You're young and naïve, sweetheart," Dean said.

"Look," she said, annoyed, "you and Sam were over there torturing the crap out of Taylor and Remy was doing a great job of distracting me from that. So maybe you should be _thanking _him."

Dean let out a pent up breath. "Fine. We'll save this argument for later."

Sophie looked up at him. "I'd like to also add that it is totally hypocritical for you to be harping on my very, very nonexistent sex life when you've been screwing April's mom—"

"I said we'll save this argument for later!" Dean snapped.

Sophie just shrugged, looking up at him for a moment before biting on the inside of her mouth, which she usually did right before saying or asking something she didn't really want to. "So, uh…did Taylor know anything?"

Dean gave her a hard look. "I think she does. But she won't say anything. She's being…testy."

"Well she's a demon," Sophie deadpanned.

"I know, but she's freakishly annoying for a demon," Dean grumbled. "Sam's still in there with her. She…she's good at getting me too angry. I needed a break."

Sophie didn't know why, but she suddenly felt the overwhelming need to hug her dad. So she did, closing the few feet between them and wrapping her arms around his torso. If he was surprised, he didn't say anything. He just hugged her back, content to hold her for a moment. When she stepped back and looked up at him, she was glad to see he looked a little more relaxed.

"Don't let her get in your head, champ," Sophie said in as authoritative a voice as she could manage.

He smirked. "Yes, ma'am."

"Good," she said sternly. "Now, for dinner, I want pancakes."

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Is that so?"

"Yep."

"In your dreams," he scoffed.

"Pretty pretty please," she begged, looking up at him from underneath her eyelashes, pouting just the right amount. "Pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty—"

"Oh my God, stop, fine, I'll make your damn pancakes!" Dean exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air in surrender. "You better be careful with those freaking puppy eyes, Sophie, they can only work so many times."

As he left the room and closed the door, Sophie grinned to herself as she made her way back to her laptop. "We'll see about that."

**It's a short chapter, but life is busy, guys. Classes, work, activities... My time is much more limited now. I'm sorry. I'll try to have a more substantial update next Saturday.**

**As for the Remy and Jack question I posed last week...seems people are just as split as I am. This is good and bad news. Good because I feel like I can go where the story takes me when it comes time for that, bad because either way a lot of you might end up unsatisfied. I have some ideas that might possibly placate both parties, but at the end of the day, this story isn't primarily about Sophie's romantic life, so I won't worry too much about it.**

**Anywho, thank you all for reading and supporting. You da bomb. ~ Lacey :)**


	71. Chapter 71: Christmas and Crowley-Part 1

_Chapter 71: Christmas And Crowley (Part 1)_

They found out how Beelzebub was able to find Sophie a few weeks later, on Christmas Eve.

The Winchesters never really did Christmas, but this year they were making a small effort. The year before, when Sophie had only been with them for a month or so, all that had been done was a small exchanging of 'Merry Christmas's over their morning coffee, and then Dean had thrown together something a little heartier than takeout or delivery pizza for dinner.

But this year, the holiday season felt a little more solemn. It was the Christmas before Dean's deadline, and just a few weeks after Beelzebub's attempt on Sophie's life. Something about it felt more urgent.

And Sam and Dean had been here before. They'd felt this feeling, back in the dark and fearful days when Dean was waiting for a hellhound to come and drag his soul to Hell. They'd sort of celebrated Christmas that year, in a small way.

But Sophie had never been in this situation before. She had fond memories of Christmas with her mother, and she hadn't even hated Christmas with Steve. He'd be in a slightly happier spirit, and would make a great meal and get a little drunk and talk about all the good times he'd had with her mother. And while it was a little uncomfortable, because she and Steve never really got along, it also wasn't terrible. And even the year before, with her first Christmas with the Winchesters, it had been kind of nice for things to be so simple and easygoing, especially since they were still getting to know each other.

But this Christmas felt wrong to her. A time of the year so joyful and bright shouldn't have been clouded with such darkness and fear.

So Dean and Sam wanted to try and make it the best damn Christmas of her life.

Which meant, for the first time in their living memory, Sam and Dean were going Christmas tree shopping.

"What exactly makes a good Christmas tree?" Dean asked as he and Sam made their way through the Christmas tree farm that they'd found about a fifteen mile drive away from the bunker.

Sam shrugged. "I don't know. Pointy, green, aromatic?"

"Aromatic?" Dean scoffed. "What are you, a hunter or a masseuse?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "Masseuse is the _female_ form of masseur, Dean," he corrected.

"Did I stutter?"

Sam just shook his head and kept walking past trees. "Look, I'm not exactly a Christmas tree expert. I've literally never had one. You at least might have a couple memories."

Dean wracked his brain. The last Christmas that he, John, and Mary Winchester had celebrated together, she'd been pregnant with Sam. Dean was only three then, but he had flashes of memories. Shiny lights and warm smiles and laughter and apple pie that he made a huge mess out of. But he couldn't remember a tree. He couldn't remember a lot of things. "_Nada_," he said. "But I'm going to guess the taller and fuller, the better."

"We're talking about trees, not women, right?" Sam asked.

"_Por que no los dos, hermano_," Dean responded with a self-satisfied grin.

Sam snorted, rubbing his hands together and sticking them in his jacket pockets. It was cold, maybe low thirties, and according to the forecast, it was supposed to snow later that night. "Look, this is Sophie we're talking about. She's not going to care if we got the greenest or best smelling tree. She's going to be surprised regardless."

Dean kicked at a tree root absentmindedly. "Yeah, well, I still want it to be a good tree," he muttered.

"A good tree," Sam repeated, and then he gave his brother a sideways smirk. "Dude, I don't want to freak you out, but she's got you wrapped so damn tight around her finger. It's adorable."

Dean shot him his best bitch face. "Shut up and help me pick a freaking tree."

After about twenty minutes, they'd finally gotten one picked out, and Dean was pleased with it. Tall and broad, green and aromatic, just like they'd been trying for. Dean had refused to use the Impala to bring it back to the bunker, afraid the tree would scratch it up, so they'd taken a truck from the stash of cars in the garage and loaded the tree up in the back of it. Then they stopped and grabbed some crappy decorations from a dollar store and some stuff to make an actual Christmas dinner from a grocery store. By the time they were done, their wallets were empty and the truck was full of so much Christmas crap that Dean was already trying to decide what fake name he wanted to open his next fraudulent credit card under before they go back to the bunker.

When they pulled up, he glanced over at Sam. "So we're sure Cas is with her, and they're out at the movies?"

Sam smirked. "Yes, Dean. I checked the GPS on her phone. They're both in the town over, watching a screening of _Miracle on 34__th__ Street_. They won't be back for probably two hours."

Dean nodded. "It's still weird, thinking of her at the movies with _Cas_."

"Yeah, well, you don't trust her with anyone else right now with Beelzebub still out and about," Sam said. "And Remy's floating around near her, too. So she's safe. Besides, she got Cas completely hooked on Christmas movies, he practically begged to take her."

It was true. Cas said that the conflict in Heaven was dying down, and that most angels were aligning themselves with him by default when it came to what to do about Beelzebub. There were still a lot of problems, but Cas made time to come and keep an eye on Sophie whenever Sam and Dean needed to run out for something.

And while Sophie was going a little crazy constantly being under someone's watch and never having alone time, she always liked hanging out with Cas. So in the past couple of weeks, she'd introduced him to the wonderful world of Christmas movies, and Cas had jumped right on board with unprecedented enthusiasm.

"Alright then," Dean said, clapping his hands together. "Let's get cracking, jolly old Saint Nick."

Sam grinned, got out of the car, and proceeded to help Dean pull together the best Christmas they could possibly muster up.

* * *

Sophie sat in the passenger seat of the car Cas was driving. She wasn't sure how exactly he'd acquired the vehicle, and honestly, she didn't want to know, so she didn't ask. It was just strange to her that Cas knew how to drive, but again, she didn't ask questions. He was talking animatedly about the movie they'd just watched, and she was grinning and replying to his questions because his enthusiasm was so adorable. But part of her mind was somewhere else.

Cas seemed to sense this. "I take it you are not as excited about the ending of the movie as I am."

"No, it's great," Sophie said. "I just…it's kind of weird. Tomorrow's Christmas."

Cas glanced over at her. "Are you not a fan of the holiday?"

She sighed. "No, I love Christmas. Always have. I just…I don't know about this Christmas." She fidgeted a little bit. "I don't want it to be our last Christmas," she said.

"Well, we are working on that, Sophie," Cas told her seriously. "We will do everything that we can to keep Dean from his fate."

"I know," she said. "Doesn't make this any easier, though."

"No, I guess it doesn't," Cas admitted. They drove in silence for a little while longer, and then he said, "Why don't you drive anymore, Sophie?"

She shrugged. "I haven't been able to since the accident. It kind of freaks me out."

"Maybe you should try again sometime," he said.

She looked over at Cas questioningly. "Why? Already tired of chauffeuring me around?"

"No," Cas said. "I rather enjoy your company. But I think it would be good for you to conquer the fears that you can. And this one…it may be a good start for you."

She sighed. "Maybe you're right."

"I usually am."

She gave him a look. "Since when did you get so sassy, Cas?"

Cas looked mildly offended. "I was not being…sassy. I was stating a fact. More often than not, I am right, statistically speaking."

Sophie couldn't help but laugh. "Right. Gotcha. Statistics." She paused for a second. "Cas, what exactly is going on in Heaven?"

"Civil war," he replied.

"Yeah, but why?" she asked. "What are they fighting over?"

Cas seemed to deliberate for a moment. "The last time, when Lucifer was about to be broken out of the Cage…Heaven was split on letting the apocalypse run its course or trying to find a way to keep it from happening. We face a similar problem now. But I believe many of the angels have learned their lesson, and it can only behoove them to try and keep the apocalypse from happening."

Sophie nodded. "I read those _Supernatural _books, and…would Lucifer try to get Sam to say yes again?"

Cas looked uncomfortable. "I don't know, Sophie. It worked last time. But I believe the more pressing issue is Beelzebub. He wants to kill Lucifer, and I don't know how he plans to do that, but I'm concerned as to what might happen if he succeeds, what plans he might have for humanity."

Sophie groaned. "This whole thing is so complicated. Lucifer and Beelzebub and rituals and angels. And I mean…even if we get the Ritual of Fire figured out and save Dad's soul, isn't Sam's still up for grabs?"

Cas looked straight ahead. "It is. He'd have to consent to give it away, though, and he knows how important it is not to do that. But as a precaution, we're hoping to find a way to apply the ritual to both of their souls." He made a slightly annoyed face. "Of course, it would help if we knew what the ritual entailed first. Might make things easier."

Sophie nodded, glancing out the window. Clouds had been building up all day, and it looked like the first flecks of snow were starting to fall out of the sky. Her heart felt heavy. A white Christmas, something she always wished for. And this year, there was such a dark cloud over her head that she almost couldn't appreciate it.

She didn't want this to be her last Christmas with her little ragtag family of hunters, angels, and misfits. She didn't want this to be the last Christmas with her dad.

Cas seemed to sense that she was feeling down, and he looked over at her. "Today is Christmas Eve, Sophie. Don't dwell on something that is still months away. Let yourself be happy for a while. You deserve it."

She grinned at him. "Thanks, Cas."

"Don't say thanks," he said, glancing at her. "Just…seeing you happy would be the only thanks I need. It's certainly the only thanks Dean would want."

Sophie sighed. For a brief moment, she marveled at how insanely lucky she was to have people who cared about her so much in her life. Sure, it wasn't an ideal situation—they were hunters, and Dean's life had a time limit, and Cas was an angel—but still, there was more caring in her life than lots of other people got. She certainly could have it worse.

"Hey Cas?" she asked.

"Yeah, little lion?"

"Is Christmas real?" she asked. "You know, the whole Jesus, Son of God, little town of Bethlehem thing. Is all that real?"

Cas nodded. "Jesus Christ was very real, although he was not born on the day you all celebrate his birth, which is very wrong from the actual day. The angels aren't exactly privy to whether or not he was the actual son of God; most are just as split as the humans on that front. But it's pretty difficult to deny that he wasn't chosen to be special by God. He did a lot of good things during his time on earth, and is worthy of celebrating. So yes, in that sense, Christmas is real." He looked over at her. "Why do you ask?"

She shrugged. "Sometimes, I just wonder. If all of this craziness with angels and demons and Lucifer is real, why couldn't all the other things be real, too."

Cas sighed. "Unfortunately, even supernatural beings must have faith to believe in some things. If there was no doubt in this world, there'd be no room for the interesting ideas and concepts that come about when people find ways to explain the unknown. Not everyone can be omnipotent."

Sophie sighed. "Well, if God's out there, I'd like an explanation for why everything seems to be getting blown to hell."

Cas shrugged. "I used to feel like that too. But then I realized that I have a lot of good around me, and that maybe my energies are better focused on that."

They pulled up to the bunker, and by then, a small dusting of snow coated the ground. Sophie looked over at Cas. "Thanks for the trip to the movies, Cas," she said. "And for the theology talk. I'm glad I have you to talk to, even if I'm going stir crazy because Dad won't let me be alone for two seconds."

"I'm always here for you, Sophie," he said, opening his door and getting out of the car. He walked over to her side, waited for her to get out, and then pulled her into an uncharacteristic, somewhat awkward, but warm hug.

She grinned as he let go of her. "What was that for?" she asked.

He gave her a long, hard look. "Merry Christmas Eve, Sophie," he said, and then he disappeared.

She stared at where he'd been for a few moments, and then shook her head. She would ask herself why he was acting so strangely, but who ever knew why Cas acted strangely? It probably would have been stranger if he _hadn't _been acting strangely.

She took a moment to look around her. The snow was still falling down in sparse flecks, landing on top of the pink beanie perched on her head and the shoulders of her blue sweater. She frowned. She didn't want another reminder of holiday spirit, not when all she wanted was to spend a real holiday with her family. But Sam and Dean didn't exactly do holidays.

Which was fine. She just didn't want the perfect white Christmas taunting her about the normalcy she never had.

She heaved a big sigh and made her way inside the bunker.

The first thing she noticed as she made her way down the staircase was that something smelled really, really good. She couldn't help but grin. So maybe Dean had rustled up a real meal in the name of Christmas. The thought made her feel a little warmer inside.

But when she got down to the bottom of the stairs and made her way into the main room, she looked up from the buttons she was undoing on her coat, and her jaw dropped.

There were lights strung up around the room, blinking in bright colors and twinkling merrily. Soft Christmas music played gently through the room, and a sweet cinnamon scent intermingled with the smell of dinner.

But perhaps the most astonishing sight of all was the Christmas tree situated in the corner of the room in between two bookshelves. It stood taller than the shelves, sparkling brightly with white lights and gold tinsel, candy canes and a few sparsely placed red ornaments adorning the branches as a tiny star flickered on the top of the tree. There were even a few poorly wrapped presents lying beneath the branches.

Sophie couldn't help it. Tears sprang to her eyes. They'd actually done it. The Winchesters had made Christmas.

She heard the sound of familiar footsteps, and she sniffed once, pushing her tears back and pulling herself together. Once she was sure her tears had passed, she turned around to see Sam and Dean standing in front of her. They both carried steaming mugs, and Dean had two in his hands. "Apple cider?" he asked her.

Sophie stood, open-mouthed. "You guys…."

"We're cheesy, chick-flick influenced, eggnog-loving men, yeah, we know," Dean said, waving away whatever emotional line she was about to say. "Seriously, kiddo, have some apple cider, it's like liquid pie."

Sophie laughed, taking the mug from Dean's outstretched hand. She took a sip, and then sighed. "Wow, that is good." She looked up at the two of them. "You guys didn't have to—"

"We know," Sam said, cutting her off with a grin.

"Yeah. Don't get a big head and think this was all for you," Dean said, shooting her a wink. "Sammy's a big fan of old Saint Nick, too."

Sophie grinned. "I swear, just when I think I know all of the cards in both of your hands, you pull something like this out of thin air and it's just…." She trailed off, looking around at everything again, and she closed her eyes, letting the moment sink into her permanent memory. "It's the perfect Christmas."

Dean smiled at her, and even though the crow's feet by his eyes were starting to get more pronounced and his eyes spoke to years of weariness, she also saw that he was happy. And it'd been a long time since she'd seen him happy. "Glad you like it, kiddo," he said.

"I just can't believe you guys pulled together a Christmas during the time Cas and I were at the movies," she said, shaking her head and taking another cip of cider.

"If Dean had spent half as much energy on his schoolwork in high school as he did on trying to pick out the perfect Christmas tree tonight, he'd probably be a professor at MIT by now," Sam noted.

"Shut up," Dean snapped at him.

Sophie grinned at their exchange, and then a thought crossed her mind and she frowned. "Oh no," she said.

Dean's smile dropped. "What? What is it?"

"Nothing," she said quickly, setting the mug down. "Hold on one sec, I need to grab something from my room."

"Okay?" he replied in mild confusion as she whisked herself out of the room, rushing down the hall and bolting into her room.

"Remy?" she asked out loud as soon as she shut the door. "Hey, Remy, could you do me a solid and just appear out of nowhere for a second? I know how much you love to do that. Please?"

"Eh, I don't know, you're coming across a bit needy," a voice said from behind her, and she whirled around.

"Okay, I deserved that," she said, her racing heartbeat already beginning to slow.

Remy grinned, forest eyes flashing. "You sort of did." He walked over and plopped down on her bed, to her annoyance. "What can I do for you this fine evening, Miss Winchester?"

"I need Christmas presents," she blurted out.

"Okay, now you're _really _coming across as needy."

"Not for me," she snapped. "For Sam and my dad. They literally just poofed up a perfect Christmas for me and I don't have presents to give either of them!"

"They don't care about presents, Soph," Remy pointed out, grinning despite his slightly more serious tone. "I'm sure your jaw dropping when you saw the tree is the best gift they could get."

"No," she said stubbornly, putting her hands on her hips. "I need to get them gifts, but I also can't leave now after they set all this up. So I need you to go get them."

Remy ran a hand through his tussled golden hair. "I'm your guardian angel, Ace, not your personal shopper."

"Remy, please!"

"Fine," he said, shrugging. "But only since you begged." He stood back up from her bed. "So what do you want me to get them?"

"I…." Then she faltered. "Oh, crap, I have no idea what to get them." She started to pace, feeling anxiety creeping through her veins. "What do you give to the two men who have utterly and completely changed your life for the better, who took you in when you had no family, who risked their lives and sold their souls so that you stay safe?"

Remy was thoughtful for a moment. "A twenty-five dollar giftcard to Hooters?"

Sophie glared at him. "Why did I even ask you for help?" she grumbled. "Seriously."

Remy shrugged. "Sophie, anything you give them, they'll love. I'm serious. The two of them love you so much it's probably unhealthy. You could give them a bag full of glitter and they'd cherish it forever."

"So you're saying I shouldn't put any thought into this?" she snapped.

"No," he said carefully. "I'm saying you shouldn't put _too much _thought into this."

She sighed. "I just have no idea," she said, helpless.

"What do they need?" Remy asked.

"Well, if you asked them, Dad would probably say he needs booze and bullets and Sam would say he needs a good book."

Remy cocked his head to the side, looking at Sophie carefully. "And what would _you _say that they need?"

"You mean besides Beelzebub's head on a silver platter?" Sophie asked. Then she snorted. "I'd say they need a good long vacation."

Remy straightened up, and Sophie could tell that behind those stunning forest green eyes, his mind was whirring away. Then he grinned. "I've got an idea."

* * *

The night had been possibly the best night Sophie had ever had with her dad and her uncle.

They ate a lot of good food and listened to cheesy, fun Christmas songs and talked endlessly about the most asinine subjects that were meaningless in the long run, yet also somehow meant the world to Sophie. It was more than she'd ever expected out of a Christmas with the Winchesters. If she was being honest, it was more than she'd ever expected out of any Christmas after her mom had died.

As it drew close to midnight, Sophie began to yawn. "This was great," she said, smiling. "It's only Christmas Eve and I'm feeling more holiday spirit than I have in years."

"Glad to hear it, kiddo," Dean said, taking a drink from what was probably his fourth beer of the night.

A part of her wanted to give him and Sam their present now, while all of the warm and fuzzy feelings were still in the air. But she wanted it to be perfect, so she figured she might as well give it to them on Christmas instead of Christmas Eve. So she stood up, feeling full of food and content with life for the moment, and grinned. "I think I'm going to turn in," she proclaimed. "Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good ni—"

Suddenly there was a loud fluttering of wings, and Remy appeared in the room. Sophie was about to make some sort of snappy remark to him, asking why he'd interrupt her family time, when she saw his grave expression.

Sam and Dean were already on their feet. "What's up, Remy?" Sam asked.

"I could feel the danger tugging at me," Remy said, his eyes sweeping the bunker as he took two steps closer to Sophie. "Something's wrong here."

"There's nothing wrong here except for the fact that I'm pretty sure Dad used a stack of old Busty Asian Beauty magazines to make the tree look taller," Sophie complained. "It's Christmas Eve, Remy, c'mon, let us just have a good—"

"The demon," he interrupted her. "The demon you two have kept captive down here for months. Where is she?"

"Taylor?" Dean asked, surprised. "She's where she's always been, in the back room, rotting until we decide to take a couple more swings at her."

Remy's eyes darkened, and he disappeared. Both Sam and Dean immediately positioned themselves closer to Sophie, ready to take on some sort of defense if something were to descend upon them.

A few tense, quiet moments later, Remy appeared, this time with a struggling Taylor in his grasp.

"You dickhead!" she shrieked. "I've had this plan hatched for _weeks_! How the hell did you know?"

Out of nowhere, a pair of devil's trap handcuffs materialized themselves on Taylor's wrists, and she started screaming a string of profanities at Remy before he rolled his eyes and shut her up with a flick of his wrist.

"What the hell is going on?" Dean snapped.

"She escaped," Remy said. "Your constant visits to her wore down the devil's trap around her until finally it broke, and she must've managed to jack the keys to her cuffs one time. Her intention was to kill Sophie, I believe, which is why my radar went off right before she got out."

"This is the guardian angel I've heard you guys yammering on and on about?" Taylor said, giving Remy a quick appreciative glance. She winked at Sophie. "Bet the sex is awesome, isn't it Baby Winchester?"

"Shut up!" Dean barked at her. "We're done with you!" He walked over to a table with a drawer and pulled out the demon-killing knife. "I'm sick and tired of trying to pry information out of you. I don't care how useful you can or can't be, you're dead! You should've been dead the moment you appeared in that motel after almost killing Sophie!"

Sophie watched in horror as Remy held Taylor still while Dean approached her with the knife. For some reason, the sight of her father advancing towards the demon with the intent to kill sent a shiver down her spine. She'd known her father killed monsters, she'd seen it with her own two eyes, but to see it like this, almost execution-like…it was chilling.

But as Dean made his motion to drive the knife forward, a flash of fear entered the demon's eyes. "Wait!" Taylor said. "I'll tell you!"

Dean froze. "Tell me what?"

"How Beelzebub found the girl," she mumbled. "How he can track her."

Dean turned his head to glance at Sophie, who was looking back at him with wide eyes. Then he turned back to Taylor, eyes murderous. "You have thirty seconds."

Taylor looked over at Sophie. "You got yourself in that car accident," she started.

"No," Dean interrupted sharply. "You don't talk to her. Talk to me."

Taylor rolled her eyes and looked at him in annoyance. "She got in the car accident, and it was pretty bad from what I heard. And then a crap load of angel grace was poured into her, and she was healed. But the cloaking that the angel Castiel did on her so long ago…that cloaking was etched into her ribs and ingrained in her soul. Both of which have changed since he did that."

"What the hell are you saying?" Dean asked.

"If her rib was cracked, it broke the Enochian and wasn't healed back perfectly in place," she clarified. "If her soul has changed—which it has, since being bound to her guardian—then the cloak was distorted."

For the first time, Sam stood up. "Are you saying we need to re-cloak her?"

Taylor narrowed her eyes. "I told you I'd tell you how he can track her, not how to prevent that from happening."

Sam pushed Dean out of the way to take his spot in front of her. "You're not in a position to negotiate here," he said in a low voice.

"It's not negotiating," she snapped. "I don't know. I'm a demon, I'm not exactly well-versed in the art of angel cloaking."

"Well then, if we're done," Dean started, stepping forward with the knife.

"Hey!" Taylor exclaimed, eyes widening in fear. "I told you what I knew!"

"Yeah, after escaping our devil's trap and getting caught," Dean said angrily. "I'm not making the same mistake twice."

"Wait."

Everyone was surprised when the word came from Sophie's mouth, Sophie being perhaps the most surprised. Heads turned in her direction, and she took a couple hesitant steps towards where Remy held Taylor. "Before…you said that Lucifer wanted me dead because I…I'm some sort of loophole for Beelzebub. But Beelzebub just tried to kill me a little while ago. So that means that Lucifer and Beelzebub both want me dead now, but before only Lucifer did. Why?"

Taylor shook her head. "I don't know. But I know who does."

"Who?" Sophie asked.

She grinned. "Well that information's gonna cost you my freedom, hon," she said.

Sam and Dean were about to make a go at her again, but suddenly Remy yanked her arm around and twisted it, and Sophie jumped as the bone snapped and Taylor screamed. "That's my warning," Remy said coolly, with very little emotion. "Answer the question."

"I'm not answering crap if I don't have assurance that I get out of here alive," she hissed.

"You don't get that assurance," he said in a level voice. "You get certain death if you don't answer, and likely death if you don't. So the ball's in your court. What's it going to be?"

Taylor glared at Sophie. "You know they can't kill me," she said. "You can't let them. I'm the one who can save your family."

"All you've done is try to destroy my family," Sophie said quietly. "Now who's the guy we want to talk to?"

Taylor seemed to realize she was finally out of options. "I'll tell you. But I'm telling you now, he's not going to take kindly to it if you kill me. We go way back."

"Who is it?" Remy repeated sternly.

Taylor took a breath. "Crowley. His name is Crowley."

**There ya have it. Wasn't planning on bringing him in until later, but I think it's gonna be good.**

**Also, sorry for the delay in posting. I'm kind of a die hard college football fan, so when there's a home game at my school, I don't have much time during the day. If at any point the rest of this year I miss a Saturday update, know that I will post the following morning.**

**Thanks friends! Much love to you all. Until Saturday (hopefully)! ~ Lacey :)**


	72. Chapter 72: Christmas and Crowley-Part 2

_Chapter 72: Christmas and Crowley (Part 2)_

Taylor was dead.

Seconds after her admission that Crowley was the one who had an idea of what was going on between Lucifer and Beelzebub, Remy ran her through with an angel blade and let her drop to the ground. "That's for the times I couldn't protect you from her," he told Sophie plainly, and then he disappeared, along with her body.

Sophie wasn't sad that she was dead, but something about it didn't sit right with her. Maybe it was because the demon's attempted escape had put a damper on her perfect Christmas Eve, or maybe because her final conversation had sparked more questions within Sophie than it had provided answers, or maybe it was the look on Sam's and Dean's faces when she had mentioned the name Crowley.

She knew who Crowley was, though she'd never met him. She knew about the tenuous relationship he had with Sam and Dean, about how sometimes he saved the day and other times was what the day needed saving from. So naturally, she was concerned by the fact that he was not a part of this whole equation.

She was in bed, trying to fall asleep at two in the morning. It was Christmas. It was Christmas, and she could still hear Sam and Dean shuffling around in the main room, arguing and trying to decide what to do about this whole Crowley situation.

Eventually, she fell asleep, but not before wishing that somehow, her life could be a little bit more normal.

* * *

Sophie woke up right as her clock went from five fifty-nine to six o'clock.

She sat up, strangely awake for only getting four hours of sleep. It was Christmas morning, but it sure as hell didn't feel like Christmas morning.

She slipped out of bed and mechanically went to her closet. She pulled out a long sleeved thermal and a hoodie as well as some long leggings and her running shoes, and she quickly threw them all on. Then she grabbed a knit headband to keep her ears warm, tucked her phone into her jacket pocket, and slipped out of her room and down the hall.

Just as she suspected, nobody was awake yet. It was early, and if Sophie had been up until two, Sam and Dean had surely been up much later. So it was easy for her to slip out of the bunker and into the snowy morning undetected.

She stood for a moment outside of the bunker and stared at the scenery around her. The ground and trees were snow-covered, and the moon was still out, giving the outdoors a beautiful silvery glow. Sophie gave a small half-grin. A white Christmas. Taylor had tried to escape, Crowley had become a part of the equation, and Sam and Dean were on edge again, but at least she had a white Christmas.

She heard the air stir beside her, and she turned and sighed. "I know you're there, Remy."

And there he stood, wearing a dark jacket and jeans, dark gold hair dusted with snowflakes. His eyes were narrowed. "Your dad would be mad at you for sneaking out to go on a run," he said.

She shrugged. "I go on runs all the time."

"Don't play dumb. You know that now isn't a good time."

Sophie nodded. "I know. I just need to get out of there for a little bit. Can't you just…follow me invisibly? Let me at least pretend that I get some alone time?"

Remy looked at her for a long time, and then he nodded. "Alright. Fine." And then he was gone.

She took a deep breath, glanced once more at the beautiful snow-covered scenery around her, and then she took off.

She wasn't sure what led her to do it, but she purposefully avoided the trail she usually ran in the woods. Maybe it was because the last time she ran in the woods, Beelzebub had tried to kill her, or maybe it was because she wanted to try something different. Either way, she found herself jogging towards the road and running alongside it.

The road stretched for a few miles, making it a longer run than she usually did. But it was peaceful. No one was out driving, both because of the snow and because it was Christmas, and the only sound was her own breathing. She wasn't even listening to music. In those moments, all she knew were the snow-covered path ahead and the sound of her own heart beating.

After maybe three miles, she saw a little light burning in a small building to the right. She didn't know why, but as she approached it, she started to slow down. In a minute she got there close enough to read the sign out front. _St. Jude Catholic Church_.

Sophie frowned. This tiny little one story building couldn't be a Catholic church. She'd read a lot of history books, and if she wasn't mistaken, Catholic churches were usually big impressive structures with pretty stained glass windows and bell towers. But this tiny, humble little building on the side of a Kansan road…that didn't really scream big and impressive.

She wasn't sure why, but she found herself slowing to a walk and slowly, almost painstakingly, making her way to the door of the church. She placed her hand on the doorknob and wondered what the hell she was doing. She wasn't Catholic. Hell, she wasn't even religious. She'd never given it all much thought. Her life had been pretty complicated as of late, and the last thing she needed was an existential crisis of meaning and purpose.

But something inside of her just lost her willpower to resist, and on top of that, she was freezing cold. So she turned the doorknob and walked inside.

The inside of the church was modest. There were no stained glass windows, but there were candles lit by every window. The pews were adorned with garland for the holiday season, and up behind the altar, a Christmas tree twinkled below a medium-sized wooden crucifix nailed to the wall. The place was completely empty, and without thinking, she walked forward and sat down in the last pew.

She looked around and immediately felt like an idiot. What had she been thinking? That she'd sit here and have a literal come-to-Jesus moment, where she found out the meaning of existence and all the answers to her problems? She of all people should know that matters involving God and the otherworldly were never what people wanted them to be. She knew that her Dad and Sam and Cas had searched out God during the apocalypse, and they'd been told that He'd abandoned the world. She wasn't sure if she believed that, but if she was being honest with herself, she didn't know what she believed.

She heard the wind whistle outside, and she hugged her arms to herself and looked up at the crucifix.

_Hey God_, she said in her head. _How's it going?_

Silence.

_If your little guy's around, tell him I say happy birthday. _She cringed. She was terrible at this. _I don't know why I'm here. I've definitely never prayed before. I'm pretty sure I believe in you. Or maybe I don't. I have no idea. If I do believe in you, I have some serious doubts about if you give a crap about any of us. No offense._

She glanced over at the candles flickering by the window and saw that the snow had started falling gently from the sky again. She sighed. _You just _had _to make it the perfect White Christmas, didn't you? You're taunting me. Or maybe you're trying to cheer me up. That's a low blow, God, using my love of snow to try to twist my emotions. _

_ Anyway, I think I'm here because I'm sort of pissed at you. I don't deserve any of this Beelzebub crap. My dad and Sam don't deserve any of it, especially. I don't know if you know, but they've sort of done your job a million times and saved the world. Where were you for the freaking apocalypse, God, huh? Actually, where were you when _my_ life went to hell? Why'd you let my mom die, why'd you let Steve be such an asshole, why'd you send me my dad and let me love him and then decide to take him away later on down the line?_

Sophie shook her head. She felt like an idiot. No one could hear her. No one could see her, sitting alone in a tiny little pew, falling apart. Except for Remy, she guessed. He was probably around somewhere, wondering if she'd finally gone crazy.

_Look, I get it. I know your catch phrase. You work in mysterious ways. But please. I can't lose my dad. I can't live this weird life of monsters and evil creatures without him. Sam…Sam's amazing. He's everything I could ever want and more in family. But my dad…he's my dad. He's done so much for me. For the world. Why can't he just have his life?_

She looked forward again and her eyes rested on the crucifix, and she winced. _Yeah, okay, I get it. Your son was brutally murdered. I can see why you might not have sympathy for my situation. I'd guess that losing a kid really sucks. But you're God, and I'm just me. I can't handle anymore of this, or I think I might actually lose it._

She sat there for a little while longer, feeling uncomfortable. If there happened to be a God and He'd been listening to her, he probably wouldn't appreciate her tone. But she couldn't help it. She'd been through too much crap to be wishy-washy. _I don't mean to be a bitch, _she added on, _but for once, I'd appreciate some answers. Maybe a sign._ _Just something that might indicate that all of this is worth it. _

She just shook her head. What was she doing, begging for answers from a God she didn't even know existed? _Well, Amen, I guess._

She stood up, feeling strangely better. She wasn't sure if her haphazard little prayer had done anything, but either way, it felt good to allow herself to think the things that she'd been trying to shove down for the past couple of months.

She began to make her way back to the door to exit, readying herself to start the run back to the bunker, when she heard a voice behind her. "Can I help you with something, miss?"

She jumped and turned around to find a priest looking at her, having just come out from behind a door beside the altar. He was surprisingly young for what she expected for a priest, maybe early thirties, with messy black hair and glasses. She immediately cleared her throat and shook her head. "No, no I'm sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you or anything. I was just... I just…." She had no idea how to explain why she'd come into the church, mainly because she couldn't explain it to herself.

The priest gave her a warm smile. "Don't worry about it. Were you looking for anyone in particular?"

She couldn't help but let out a small laugh, and she glanced back at the front of the church. "I guess," she said. "But I don't think he's here at the moment. Maybe I'll try again another day."

The priest looked at her closely and nodded thoughtfully. "You should," he said eventually. "I'm sure he's around here somewhere. He might just think that for now, you guys need a little space."

"Maybe," she said. "Thank you, sir."

He laughed. "Please, don't sir me. I'm just Father Ted. Feel free to come back whenever you like."

Sophie was pretty sure she wouldn't be returning, but she just nodded. "Thanks."

"And miss?" he said. She just looked back at him, waiting for him to say something priestly like _God bless_ or _Jesus loves you_. But instead, he just grinned at her. "Merry Christmas."

She cracked a grin. "Merry Christmas to you too, Father Ted."

And then she slipped out the door and started running back to the bunker.

* * *

She heard voices as she descended down the stairs.

"Dean, she's fine. She's probably just on a run. If something was wrong Remy would have told us something."

"It's freaking nine in the morning, Sam! She's usually always back from runs at seven or seven thirty."

Sophie glanced at her phone and cringed in disbelief. It actually _was _nine. She had run for a longer time than usual, not including her pit stop at the church. "Hey!" she called out. "Don't freak out, I'm back!"

Sam and Dean rushed into the main room so quickly Sophie could have sworn they materialized out of thin air. "Where the hell have you been?" Dean snapped at her.

"I was on a run," she said meekly.

"By yourself? After everything that went down last night? Are you insane?" he exclaimed.

"Remy was there," she said in an attempt to defend herself. "And I needed some time to process everything."

Sam nudged Dean's shoulder and gave him a look that clearly spelled out _Cut her some slack_. The pissed look on Dean's face waned, but only by a little. "Why were you gone for so long?"

"Because running in snow is harder than I thought," she lied. "Now can you two stop being overprotective mother hens and just let me go take a shower and grab some coffee?"

"Fine," Dean said. "But come back in here after you get your caffeine fix. We have to talk about some stuff."

Sophie sighed. She knew that couldn't mean anything good. She made her way into her room, stripping off her cold, gross clothing and stepping into a hot shower. She made quick work of it and then hopped out, drying off and throwing on a pair of leggings and a pink T-shirt. Then she slowly made her way out into the kitchen, wanting to drag out the process of getting her coffee so that she could postpone having to talk with Sam and Dean.

But unfortunately, the coffee was already ready, and so all she had to do was grab a mug, fill it up, and shuffle her way unenthusiastically into the main room.

Sam and Dean were waiting for her, Dean glancing distractedly at a newspaper while Sam typed something into a search engine on his laptop. They both looked up as she walked in, and then exchanged looks. Sophie sat down on the opposite end of the table, taking a sip of coffee and looking up at them. "Alright. Lay it on me."

Dean set his paper back down on the table and Sam closed up his laptop, which Sophie knew meant they both meant business. "We need to talk about this Crowley situation."

Sophie sat back in her chair. "What about it?"

Sam leaned forward. "Crowley's…sort of a wild card. Sometimes he helps us out a lot, and other times—"

"He does stupid crap that gets good people killed," Dean cut in. "So we've decided you're sitting this one out."

Sophie just glared at him. "No."

Dean looked surprised. "No?"

"I know you don't want me to get hurt," she said. "I really, genuinely appreciate that. Believe me, I don't want to get hurt either. In fact, Beelzebub scares the crap out of me. But the only other thing that scares me more is not knowing all the facts." She twisted the mug around in her hand as she tried to find the right words. "I'm tired of getting caught off guard with information that everyone except for me seems to know."

"Soph, I know it's frustrating," Sam tried, "but you're just not ready to deal with someone like Crowley."

"I know that," she said, trying to make sure she kept her voice level so that she didn't come across as angry. "I'm not asking you to send me in there alone, guns blazing. I just don't want to be left here by myself while you guys go and try to solve a problem that I'm involved in. This is my fight too, now."

"No it's not," Dean shot at her. "You're not the one whose soul is up for sacrifice."

Sam shot him a glare, and Sophie winced. She hated being reminded of that so plainly and offhandedly. But she knew he was just saying it to try and get her pissed enough to just yell at him and throw in the towel. So she took a deep breath and kept her gaze steely. "You're right," she admitted. "But I am the one who was about three seconds away from having a freaking sword run through her. I'd say that makes me a part of this now."

Sam and Dean exchanged a glance, but Dean just shook his head. "No. Look, I get that it's frustrating, but Crowley's a tricky son of a bitch. With him, you might not get to be the girl that _almost _got ran through with a sword, you'll just be the girl that _was _run through with a sword."

Sophie shook her head. "Either you let me come with you whenever you try to talk to him, or I go try to find him by myself."

Dean looked surprised. Sophie wasn't usually one to give ultimatums, especially to him, especially when she knew he was only doing something to try and keep her safe. "You wouldn't be that stupid," he said.

"Yeah, I would," she said, leaving the sentence hanging in the air.

Dean turned his head to Sam, clearly looking for help. Sam just shrugged helplessly. "She's not exactly wrong," he said, to Dean's stony disapproval. "At this point it's more dangerous for her not to know what's going than it was before."

Dean sat back in his chair, staring at Sophie for a few long moments. She stared right back, taking a long sip of her coffee. Then he released a long breath. "I'll think about it," he finally said. "But just for the record, I don't like this new tone you've been using."

Sophie's rolled her eyes. "You mean the tone I use when I don't like being patronized? Sorry, Dad, you might want to get used to that one if you're going to keep treating me like a helpless little kid who doesn't understand what the grown ups are saying."

She stood up, grabbed her coffee mug in her hand, and stormed out of the room.

Sam looked over at Dean. "Really, Dean? 'I don't like this new tone'? Did you really think that would be a good thing to say right now?"

"Well, it's true," Dean grumbled, but he knew he'd messed up.

"Look, I don't trust Crowley as far as I can throw him," Sam said. "But…he wouldn't hurt Sophie. He knows what we would do if he did that. He's not stupid."

"I know," Dean said, annoyed. "That still doesn't make me warm and fuzzy at the thought of introducing my daughter to the King of Hell."

"We're past trying to give Sophie a warm and fuzzy life," Sam pointed out. "At this point, we just want her living and breathing and preferably not hating us."

Dean shook his head. "This bites, man," he said. "What a crappy last family Christmas."

"Dammit, Dean, this isn't your last Christmas," Sam snapped, standing up angrily. "Shut down the pity party, for God's sake, and start figuring out how to get yourself the hell off of Beelzebub's bitch list. Starting by calling Crowley and figuring out a time and place to meet up with him." He shoved his chair back under the table. "And we're bringing Sophie," he added, before leaving Dean alone at the table.

* * *

Sophie was lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling.

She was fuming, but she didn't try to explore her feelings. She just stewed in her anger, wanting to run back out and yell at her dad about how he was being ridiculous treating her like some toddler who had no idea what the stakes were in this whole thing. But she didn't want to make things worse, so she just stayed in her room, refusing to leave it for fear of blowing up at the wrong time.

She stayed like that, immobile in her irritation, until about an hour later, when there came a knock at her door.

When she didn't answer, she heard Dean's tensely, painstakingly patient voice come through the door. "Soph, can I come in?"

"No, sorry, I'm too busy being totally and completely useless to you," she called back.

Her door creaked open, and Dean stepped inside. "That's not true," he told her gruffly. "I don't think you're useless."

"Well you sure don't act like it," she said, refusing to look him in the eye.

"I just don't want you to get hurt anymore than you already have," he told her, trying to convey to her in his voice how seriously he meant this. "You know…you know that I've lost pretty much everyone I've ever cared about, and I'll be damned if I let that happen to you, too."

At that, Sophie lifted herself up so that she was in a sitting position, and she let herself look at her dad. "I know," she admitted. "But you can't protect me by keeping me in the dark anymore. That's so much worse."

"I know," he said. "It's just…well, it's scary to admit that, I guess."

Sophie cracked a grin. "Something is _scary _to the fearless Dean Winchester?" she asked with feigned gusto. "Inconceivable!"

He rolled his eyes. "Sweetheart, ever since you waltzed into my life, the whole world has gotten about ten times scarier than it used to be."

"Do I bully you _that _much?" she asked sweetly.

He snorted. "Don't flatter yourself, sweetheart, I'm my own worse bully."

"Well you've got that right," she muttered.

"Look, I'm overbearing and overprotective and a bit of a bastard sometimes, I know that," Dean continued, looking at her straight on, the muscles in his face tense. "But I've been through a lot of crap in my life, and I've kind of earned that unfortunate character flaw."

She gave him a hard look. "Is this your way of telling me that despite everything, you're _still _not letting me be a part of this?"

Dean hesitated for a moment, and then he shook his head. "No. No, you can be a part of this. But we're setting down some solid ground rules, and if you cross any lines then I'm sending your ass to boarding school in Switzerland, _capiche_?"

"You can't afford boarding school in Switzerland," Sophie pointed out.

"I said, _capiche_?" Dean reiterated sternly.

"Yeah, yeah," Sophie said. "I'm listening."

"You call a grand total of _zero _shots," Dean commanded. "I mean it. Zero. As far as executive decisions go, that's all me and Sam. Your input means nothing for the purposes of this whole conflict. You also do whatever I say, whenever I say it. If at any point I tell you to run, you haul ass to get out of there. Or if I tell you to get in the car and drive as far away as you can, then you do that without hesitation. If I tell you to pat your head and rub your stomach, that's what you do. Are you with me?"

"So basically, you're Dumbledore, and I'm Harry, and we're going on the hunt for Horcruxes."

Dean threw his hands up in the air. "What the hell does that even mean?"

She sighed. "It means you're about ten years overdue on reading Harry Potter. And it also means that I accept your terms and conditions."

Dean nodded. "Awesome, because I got into contact with Crowley, and we're meeting up with him in an hour."

Sophie's head shot up to attention, her green eyes widening in surprise. "Wait, really?"

"Yeah," Dean said in a short voice. "So get dressed in something warm. We're going for a little drive."

Sophie jumped up from her bed. "So I get to meet Crowley?"

Dean's eyes narrowed. "You don't _get _to meet him. You _have_ to, because you decided you want in on this. But meeting him isn't a good thing. I wish you could go your whole life without ever meeting him."

She wilted a little. "Right. Sorry."

"It's fine," he said tensely. "Now get dressed, we're leaving in ten."

And so when Dean left the room, Sophie jumped up and ran to her closet, where she stripped off her clothing and wondered briefly what one wore when they went to go meet the King of Hell. Then she figured that of all the things going on in her life, that was the most ridiculous to be thinking about, so she threw on what she would have on any regular day, which was a pair of jeans, a knit dark green sweater, her coat, her snow boots, and her favorite pink beanie.

Then she made her way out the door, ready to go find out what the hell was going on with Beelzebub.

* * *

"Dad, c'mon, I've already repeated it twice."

"Again," Dean said sharply and tensely from behind the wheel of the Impala.

Sophie, sitting in the backseat, sighed. "I won't say or do anything unless you give me the go ahead."

"Music to my ears," Dean said in satisfaction. He looked over at Sam, who sat in the passenger's seat. "How far are we from the intersection?"

"Maybe three minutes," Sam said, glancing at the GPS on his phone. He looked back at Sophie. "You know, I don't agree with Dean all that much usually—"

"Don't undermine me, jerk," Dean shot at him in annoyance.

"—but today he's right," Sam continued. "Crowley does whatever is best for himself, and sometimes that's helping us, and sometimes that's trying to get us killed. So just be on your toes, okay?"

"I know, okay?" Sophie said, tired of all the cautions. "He's a bad guy, I won't provoke him, I won't be an idiot. I'm just here as…as like, a hunter intern. I'm observing, and I just want some answers."

"A hunter intern," Dean repeated in amusement. "Sure. Alright."

A couple minutes later, Dean pulled the Impala over at an intersection between two snow-covered, completely abandoned roads. He sat there for a moment, leaving the Impala idling, and looked over at Sophie. He opened his mouth, and she cut him off. "Dad, I'm not repeating it again."

"Fair enough."

Sam unbuckled his seat belt. "We should wait outside. God knows when he'll pop up out of nowhere."

Sophie and Dean silently followed suit, and in a minute, they were all standing outside of the Impala, shivering in the cold. Dean looked down at his daughter, whose eyes were narrowed slightly against the chilly wind, her hair looking particular red against the snowflakes that had settled on her soft curls.

It was crazy to him how much she had changed just in the year or so of him knowing her. Before, she'd been a little bit more baby-faced, a little younger and more naïve. And now months of working hard to become a better hunter's daughter had left her leaner and tougher, and while she still was young and in some ways, still naïve, she had come a long way.

It occurred to Dean that even though maybe he wished that she could have somehow had a life with him outside of the context of hunting, he was still so damn proud of her.

And then he felt a shift in the air, and immediately he turned away from her and looked around. It only took a few seconds for him to zero in on the man who had not been standing there a mere five seconds before.

Dressed in a sharp black suit, with surprisingly scruffy hair and grandfatherly brown eyes, looking utterly unaffected by the cold, the man looked at the Winchesters with a smirk. "Squirrel, Moose," he said, and the rough British accent surprised Sophie. "It's been too long." Then his eyes zeroed in on Sophie, and he looked mildly surprised. "I take it that you're Squirrel's spawn? A little birdie told me you've caused quite a few hiccups, my dear."

She had no idea how to respond to that, but luckily, she didn't have to. "This isn't about her," Dean snapped. "At least, not entirely."

Crowley gave Dean an insincere frown. "Don't take it so personally, Dean, I was just trying to make friendly conversation." He shot Sophie a wink, and she just stood uncomfortably, unsure of what she should do. "Now I'm sure you didn't call and meet up just for old time's sake."

"_A little birdie _told us you knew a little bit about what Beelzebub and Lucifer are planning," Sam cut in, seeing that Dean wasn't going to be levelheaded about this. "We want to know what's going on."

"Ah, I see now," Crowley said, and again his gaze fell on Sophie. "I take it good old Beelzebub gave you some sort of scare and whispered something not very nice in your ear, and now you're all confused about what the endgame is, isn't that right, love?"

"How did you know that?" she asked quietly.

Dean turned back around to glare at her. "What did I say about speaking?" he shot at her.

"C'mon, Squirrel, let the girl talk," Crowley said. "I'm not going to bite. She's quite too young for me to do that."

"Hey," Sam snapped. "Let's just bring this back in to something relevant. Like why Beelzebub is willing to kill Sophie when Lucifer seems to think she's the loophole to all of Beelzebub's problems. Or do you not know anything about this?"

"I know a lot about this," Crowley said flippantly. "Beelzebub and I were…partners, if you will, for a time, back when I was fairly new to Hell. He showed me the ropes, taught me how to climb the ladder, made me into the demon I am today. But he had…a different agenda, and a different way of getting what he wants. We went our separate ways, and haven't spoken for several centuries." He frowned. "As for Lucifer, the only way I know anything about him is through his favorite little lapdog, feisty little demon that goes by Taylor. But she's been off the grid for a few months."

"She's dead," Dean said gruffly.

Crowley raised his eyebrows and stared at Dean, as if waiting for some sort of explanation. When he didn't give one, the King of Hell merely shrugged. "Bit of a shame. She was probably your best source of information."

"Well now we have you," Dean said stiffly. "So what can you tell us?"

"Not much," Crowley said. "But I'll tell you what I know free of charge."

"Why?" Sam and Dean asked at the same time.

"Because I don't benefit from another apocalypse. Hell is already overcrowded as it is. I need this conflict resolved quickly and quietly."

"Well," Dean said, "then what do you know."

Crowley sighed. "Firstly, if Beelzebub was able to find her, it'd be wise to get your pet Castiel to cloak her, or strengthen any preexisting cloaks. And secondly, the simple truth is that Beelzebub doesn't know that your daughter is the loophole just yet. And trust me, Dean, that should make you count yourself lucky. If you care about the girl at all, you best hope that he never finds out." Crowley glanced at a shiny, expensive looking watch on his wrist. "I'm afraid I have another meeting to attend, boys. Terribly sorry."

Before Dean could say anything else, Crowley disappeared and then reappeared right next to Sophie. Before Sam or Dean could do anything, Crowley leaned in and whispered something in Sophie's ear, and then when the Winchester brothers finally moved in her direction, Crowley disappeared for good.

Dean immediately stood in front of Sophie, hands falling gently on her shoulders. "What did he say to you?" he asked sternly.

Sophie shook her head. "I don't know," she said, looking up at him with confused eyes. "He said it so quickly and his voice was so rushed I couldn't hear it at all."

"Could you make out any words?" Sam asked. "Any at all?"

"Just 'squirrel'," Sophie said with a slight laugh, rolling her eyes. "It was probably just a jab at you."

The brothers nodded their heads. It was certainly something Crowley would do. "Well…fine," Dean said. "So we know Beelzebub doesn't know something. We have a leg up."

"It's not a leg up if we _also _don't know the thing the Beelzebub doesn't know," Sophie pointed out. Then she sighed. "God, that was the most complicated sentence ever."

"It's a start, though, and it's more than we had before," Sam said. "C'mon, let's get back in the car where it's warm."

Both he and Dean made their way into the car, but Sophie stayed back for a couple more seconds. The snow now covered most of her clothing and was all in her hair, and she was freezing.

But the words Crowley had told her froze her even more. They'd messed her up so much, in fact, that she felt numb enough to be able to lie through her teeth to Sam and Dean.

But the words ran through her head all the same.

_If Beelzebub finds the loophole, love, death is the very least of your worries._

* * *

Later that night, Sophie was sitting at the main table reading a book and thinking about going to bed when Dean walked in and sat a mug of apple cider in front of her.

"Thanks, Dad, but I think I'm gonna hit the sack," she said, her sentenced stretched out by a poorly timed yawn.

He gave her a look of feigned surprise. "Before we open Christmas presents?"

She looked up at him, eyes widening a little bit. "Really?"

He nodded. "Today was probably the worst Christmas in the history of Christmases," he said. "But that doesn't change the fact that Sammy and I got you a little gift, and we still want to give it to you."

Sophie watched in surprise as Dean pulled a small, messily wrapped package out from his pocket and handed it to her. Sophie looked over his shoulder at Sam, who had made his way over from back in the stacks of books looking for some texts on old Mesopotamian rituals, and she saw him give her an encouraging nod. So she grinned. "Okay then," she said before unwrapping it and opening up the box.

Inside was a set of car keys with a small coffee cup keychain attached to it. Sophie gaped and looked up at Dean. "What…?"

"There's a car down in the garage for you," he said, unable to keep the grin off his face. "And I know you're still iffy on driving, but we figured that maybe soon you'd change your mind. And whenever you do…there's a gently used Jetta waiting for you in the garage. And yes, it hurts me to say the very word _Jetta_ just as much as you think it does, so please don't make me repeat it."

Sophie looked up at Dean suspiciously. "Is it stolen?"

"Nope," he sighed. "I have the registration and everything, as proof."

She smiled up at him, and then over at Sam. "Thank you, guys. Really. I know you think this Christmas was a bust, but…it really wasn't. Everything you tried to do for me was perfect, it really was." Dean grinned, and before he could say anything else Sophie stood up from her chair. "I got you two a present as well."

Dean glanced back at his brother in mild surprise. "What's that?" he asked.

Sophie pulled her phone out of her pocket and scrolled through her emails until she found the one she was looking for. Then she held it out for Dean to see, and he read the subject line of the email out loud. "Stanford University tour confirmation?" he said. He looked down at her. "What is this?"

"I decided we all needed a vacation," she said firmly. "And next year, I start applying to colleges. I don't know if Stanford is necessarily where I want to go, but it's a start, and a little weekend trip to California might be nice. And it wouldn't just be vacation, it'd be practical, too. I mean, I've gotta tour campuses, and I've gotta start making these decisions, so really, we'd just be knocking out two birds with one stone."

Dean looked over at Sam and wasn't surprised to see the look of radiant pride on his brother's face. After all, Dean was proud, too. This girl had been through hell, had been given every reason to give up on her dreams and decide not to go to college and become a hunter or worse, had seen things that no sixteen-year-old should ever have to see.

But here she was, trying to give her dad and her uncle the gift of much more than a little weekend vacation. It was the gift of knowing she would have a life even if something awful happened to them, the gift of knowing she was tough enough and smart enough to get through.

Dean pulled her in for a hug and kissed the top of her head. "That's a great idea, kiddo," he said in a low voice.

She melted into the hug, and then switched to giving Sam a hug. After that, she picked her book and her new car keys off of the table and beamed at the two of them. "I'm going to go to sleep now," she said. "But Merry Christmas. You guys made this one for the books, I promise."

She turned to go, and Dean watched as the flash of strawberry blonde hair disappeared as she turned the corner out of the main room.

"Merry Christmas to you too, Sophie."

But those weren't the words that kept running through Sophie's head as she jumped into bed and tried to fall asleep.

_If Beelzebub finds the loophole, love, death is the very least of your worries._

**I love that you guys were wondering how my team did/which team I was rooting for last weekend when I missed my deadline due to football obligations/obsession (luckily today's an away game, so I have some extra time on my hands). Unfortunately, I can't tell you where I go to school, for privacy's sake. But I will tell you that we won, and we kicked ass, so that might narrow it down for you :P**

**Anyway, thank you all for reading! I know this was a long one, but updates will probably longer-ish now that I'm pretty restricted to just Saturdays.**

**Until next Saturday (fingers crossed—next week is a home game)! ~ Lacey :)**


	73. Chapter 73: We'll Be Okay

_Chapter 73: We'll Be Okay_

Today was the day.

There was no way to push it off any longer, no way to draw out the inevitable.

Today, Sophie was going to tell Jack about Remy.

She wondered why on earth she felt so guilty. After all, there was nothing going on between her and Remy. He was an angel, millennia older than her. The thought of being with him like that was, quite frankly, gross. It had to be. Because if Sophie felt anything for Remy, she was messed up six ways to Sunday, right?

So it was time to tell Jack, and it scared the hell out of her. Because even though things weren't exactly perfect between her and Jack at the moment—how could it be, with her leaving giant chunks of her life out of their conversation?—she still didn't want to lose him. She didn't think she could stomach the thought of him breaking up with her because of this. Because whether or not she was ready to say it out loud, she loved Jack.

And now she was about to jeopardize everything by telling him the truth.

She was meeting him at Busboys and Brew, the little coffee shop he'd taken her to way back when they had just been getting to know each other. She still wasn't driving, so she'd asked Sam to drop her off there under the pretense that she wanted to check out their gift shop section so that she could get Jamie a late Christmas present. He seemed to buy her story, so he just dropped her off, said he'd circle back in an hour to get her, and drove away.

She walked into the little coffee shop and, upon seeing that Jack had yet to arrive, she sat down in a corner booth and ordered a coffee from the waitress. When it came, she sipped it nervously and waited for Jack to arrive.

When he did, Sophie almost jumped when she saw him. She watched as he looked around for her, and she stared at him in a strange sense of awe. Somehow, she had gotten so lucky, and she was dating a ridiculously hot, smart, kind, and understanding person. Even now, she marveled at how fortunate she was. And she loved Jack, she did. Everything about him—the bluest eyes she'd ever seen, the brown hair, the heart-stopping lopsided goofy grin he always wore, his love of books, his love of life, his love for his family, his genuine kindness, his sense of humor. There wasn't a single damn thing wrong with him.

_She_ was the only thing wrong with him, she realized. He could have had his choice of so many girls, and for some reason, he'd chosen the one that was sure to break his heart.

Even though she hated herself for it, it made her love him more.

He finally saw her, and he grinned when his eyes landed on her. She grinned back as he walked over to her. "Already got started on the caffeine, I see," he said before placing a small kiss on her lips and sliding into the seat across from her.

"I was thirsty."

"More like you were itching for a fix," he teased. "You do realize that caffeine is a drug, right? You are a drug addict."

"Ha ha, very funny," she sighed, tapping her finger on the side of her coffee mug.

Jack frowned at her. "S, what's up? Normally you love my dumb attempts to crack jokes. Is something wrong?"

"No. Yes. No. Mostly no," she tried to answer truthfully. "I…I just wanted to talk to you."

Jack leaned in, a concerned look on his face. "You know you can always talk to me, S," he said. "Always. About anything. That's a promise."

He was too nice, that was his problem. Too understanding. She nearly cringed. "You're going to hate me," she said in a quiet voice. "And don't say you won't, because you will, and that's why it's so hard for me to tell you this."

At that, Jack sat back, looking like he'd just been electrocuted. "Are you…are you breaking up with me?" he asked, shocked.

Sophie's eyes widened, and she shook her head quickly. "No! God, no! Of course not! Are you kidding?"

Jack looked relieved, but only by a little bit. "So what's up then?"

Sophie fidgeted, not sure how to say what she wanted to say. She took a sip of coffee and a deep breath. "I've kind of been…lying to you about some things," she admitted, each word hurting as they came out of her mouth. "Some things about Remy, from school."

She knew she'd introduced the subject in the wrong way when Jack's eyes narrowed, and his face looked vaguely nauseated. "Are you two…?"

"No, no, there's nothing between us. Or well, there's something between us, but it is entirely platonic and not romantic at all whatsoever."

Now she could see the hurt on his face, and it was crushing her. "You expect me to believe there isn't anything between you two after you tell me you've been lying about him for months?"

"Let me start over," she pleaded, and he was quiet for a moment, which she took as the go-ahead to try again. She took a deep breath, stared Jack straight in the eye, and just said it. "Remy is my guardian angel."

Jack's face froze, and she looked into his eyes, trying to get an idea of what was going on inside of his head. "Huh?" he finally managed.

"Remy is an angel," she explained softly. "His real name is Eremiel. After all of that stuff happened at the Bash, and I was almost killed, my dad and Sam and Castiel were looking for ways to try to keep me safe when they weren't here, and Cas pulled some strings and got me my own personal guardian angel."

Jack sat back in the booth, head leaning against the back of his seat. Sophie waited patiently, but on the inside her stomach was churning and she thought she might be sick. "What exactly does that mean?" he finally asked.

"Well," she said, "guardian angels kind of…bind their souls to their human charges. So he's, uh, pretty connected to me. He can kind of feel how I'm feeling, and he can tell if I'm in danger even before I know it. It's actually…been pretty helpful. He's saved my life a couple times."

His eyes narrowed. "When exactly did you need your life to be saved?"

Sophie didn't want to answer, but she knew the only way she and Jack were going to get through this one was if she told him everything. So she did. "Um…well, when I ran away to North Carolina and got in that car accident…it was actually a lot worse than I let on. I had to get pried out with the Jaws of Life and I was Medevac-ed to a hospital in St. Louis, and if Remy hadn't been there I probably would've been D.O.A." Jack's eyes had widened and she continued. "And, um, the whole cross country race thing…Remy saved me then, too. If he hadn't been there, Beelzebub would have killed me, no question." She cringed, and then said. "Also, on Christmas Eve, this demon was after me, and I didn't even know it, and Remy stopped her before she could even get into the same room as me." She looked at him, hating the angry look on Jack's face. "I know, it's kind of pathetic how often I need saving, right?" she tried to joke half-heartedly.

"This whole time," he started slowly. "This whole time I've talked so much crap about him and told you how much I don't like him, he's actually been literal soulmates with you."

"We're not _soulmates_," Sophie tried to assure him. "Honestly, he's mostly a pain in the ass except for when he's saving my life. I could never ever like him in that way. He's an _angel_, Jack. He's God knows how many centuries old."

Jack just shook his head. "I just don't get it," he said after a moment. "If there were never any feelings between you two, why did you keep it from me?"

She sighed, looking at him in the eyes, trying to convey to him how sorry she was. "I don't know," she said. "I think I just knew how much you didn't like him, and how much you don't like it when I'm in a dangerous situation, and me having him is just kind of a reminder that my whole life is just one big dangerous situation. And…I don't know, at first I didn't know how to explain it, and then it just got easier to keep lying, and now…now I guess I'm just tired of you not knowing. And it's not just that. You deserve to know."

Jack certainly didn't look happy, although he also didn't look angry. But he did look overwhelmed, and a bit—to Sophie's devastation—disappointed.

Sophie hadn't even realized tears were building up in her eyes until Jack gave her an exasperated look. "Please, Sophie, please don't cry," he said. "I don't hate you, if that's what you're afraid of."

She sniffed once, trying to push her tears back. "I don't want this to be over for us," she said. "I don't want this to be over because I was too scared to tell you about my guardian angel."

Jack gave a little chuckle and a grin, even though it didn't quite reach his eyes. "I don't want to break up, S," he said after a long moment. "But I also... can't exactly be around you right now. I just want to think."

Sophie's heart dropped a bit, but she nodded. She was the last person that could deny someone their right to have some space after having a bomb dropped on them. How many times had she run away from Jack after having the same thing happen to her? "Of course," she said quietly, wrapping her hands around her coffee mug to keep them from shaking, looking down into the depths of the mug so that she didn't have to make eye contact with him. "Take however much time you need."

"Sophie," he said, and his voice made her look up at him. He was staring at her with a surprising, uncharacteristic ferocity, and she couldn't look away. "You know why I can't let this break us up, don't you?" he asked. "You know why this isn't a deal breaker for me?"

She shook her head wordlessly. She had no clue. She was quite possibly the worst girlfriend ever. If she were Jack, she probably would have taken off in the opposite direction a long time ago. Why _would _he stay after she'd told him the truth? Who would do that?

Jack just looked frustrated. "It's because I love you, Sophie," he said. "I love you, and I wouldn't put myself through this if I didn't."

Sophie was so shocked that her hands, which had been bringing the coffee mug up to her mouth, froze midair. She had to work hard to make sure the tears didn't start back up. And then she whispered, "I love you, too. I really do."

Jack nodded, giving her a small grin. "We can work through this then," he said. "We will."

Then he stood up from the booth, leaned down to give her a gentle kiss on the cheek, and then walked out of the store with his hands in his pockets.

Once she watched his car pull out of the parking lot, she dissolved into tears.

* * *

Over the course of the next couple of days, Sophie didn't hear from Jack.

She knew he'd call her when he was ready, so she didn't try to push him to reach out to her. But still, even though she knew they were going to survive this obstacle, it didn't stop her from moping around the bunker like the angst-ridden teenage girl that she was.

Sam and Dean had noticed that something was off, but they just chocked it up to the fact that she'd had a really, really, inordinately crappy last month, and she was overdue for a little bit of moping.

But after a few days of it, Dean decided he needed to do something to cheer her up. So one day, while she was sitting in her little alcove among the bookshelves, reading a book that looked bigger than Dean's head, he walked up to her without preamble and started jangling his car keys in front of her face.

She gave him an annoyed look. "What?" she asked sharply.

"We're going for a drive," he told her.

She lifted up her book. "I'm in the middle of something."

"Well you and whatever dead author you're reading can pick up where you left off when we get back," Dean said authoritatively. "Now come on."

Knowing that there was no way she was going to be able to shake him, Sophie sighed, bookmarked her page, and stood up. "Where are we going?"

"You'll see," he said tauntingly, to her annoyance.

"I hate surprises," she grumbled, following him through the bunker, grabbing her coat along the way.

"You're just saying that because you're annoyed that I'm making you get off your ass and do something instead of sitting here rotting away," Dean pointed out, making his way to the garage and the Impala.

"I'm not rotting away," she shot back. "I was reading."

"Those are functionally the same thing," he told her with a teasing grin, to which she just frowned. His smile fell. "Soph, c'mon. Cheer up. We're about to do something totally legendary."

She couldn't help but feel her interest pique. "What?" she asked.

They stopped in front of the Impala, and Sophie glanced over at her new Jetta that she'd gotten for Christmas. It looked fairly out of place in the garage full of classic cars, and it also hadn't moved once since it'd gotten there. She still hadn't built up the courage to drive again, even though she knew she was running out of reasons to avoid it.

When she turned to look back at Dean, she saw that the grin had come back onto his face, and then without warning, he tossed her his car keys.

She caught them deftly with a confused look on her face. "I don't get it," she told him.

Dean's grin was so bright it almost made her grin back. "I, Dean Winchester, hereby give you, Sophia Marybeth Winchester, _extremely_ temporary permission to drive and operate my beautiful baby."

Sophie just stared at Dean for a few long moments. "Are you feeling okay?" she finally asked.

Dean's grin waned a bit. "I feel fine, Soph."

"Are you sure? Because the Dean Winchester I know would never willingly hand the keys to his car over to his daughter. The daughter that just recently totaled her own car."

"This is a gesture of my utter faith in you," he said, grabbing the handle to the passenger seat of the Impala and opening the door. "Now get in."

Sophie slowly walked to the driver's side of the Impala, like at any moment Dean would pop out and yell out that this was all just one big scam. But he said nothing, just waited for her to slide into the front seat.

She opened the door and sat down in the driver's seat. For some reason, a tiny chill went up her spine. It was stupid—after all, she didn't exactly subscribe to the amount of reverence for the Impala like Dean did.

But Dean hardly ever let _Sam _drive the car, much less his teenage, barely-legal-to-drive daughter. It wasn't just a sign of faith in her; it was an act that said _I care about you more than I could ever care for this car, and I care about you enough to risk my most prized possession to help you cheer up and get over your fear of driving. _

She looked over at Dean. "You really don't have to do this," she said. "I get that you what you're trying to do, but…."

He gave her a look. "Kiddo, just put the keys in the ignition."

She nodded, taking a deep breath and doing what he said and listening as the engine purred to life. She looked over at Dean, who was looking over at her with a goofy smile that she very rarely saw on him. "Where are we going?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Just drive for a little bit."

She sighed, and after taking a moment to familiarize herself with the gearshift and any and all potential buttons she might need to push, she pulled out of the garage and made her way out onto the road.

The Impala might have been way older than either Sophie or Dean, but Sophie couldn't deny that the thing ran better than any car she'd ever driven. Dean sure knew how to keep her in shape like a charm.

Sophie found herself driving down a long stretch of highway. The radio was on very low, playing something that Sophie roughly identified as the Rolling Stones, but she didn't quite remember the title. Dean was sitting back in his seat, hands behind his head, looking surprisingly relaxed.

She felt her mood lighten slightly, and she cracked a grin. Without saying anything, she flipped to a radio station that she knew played pop music, and immediately Dean straightened up. "Woah, woah, hey," he started. "None of that rinky-dinky pop nonsense is tainting my baby."

"Dad," she replied in a knowing tone, "you know the rules. Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his—"

"Hey! You can't use my rules against me!"

"Rules are rules are rules," she said, grinning as she kept an eye on the open road.

"You're a sneaky little girl, I hope you know that," he grumbled.

She smirked. "Thank you."

"Not a compliment."

"I'm taking it as one."

Dean grinned. "You know, as annoying as it can be, I sort of missed snarky Sophie."

She shrugged. "She's still in here," she said. "Just a little harder to access nowadays, I guess."

His grin waned. "You know, I can tell you haven't been yourself lately," he started slowly, testing the waters. When she didn't immediately respond, he pushed. "Anything bothering you?"

"You mean other than the impending rise of Beelzebub and opening of Lucifer's Cage?" she snapped. Then she shook her head. "Sorry, that was evil snarky Sophie, not funny snarky Sophie."

Dean didn't seem to take it to heart. "Yeah, Soph, I mean other than that."

She sighed. "I guess," she said, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel and trying to decide if she wanted to tell Dean. Then she glanced over at him, saw that he was still looking at her and patiently awaiting an answer, and then she gave in. "I told Jack about Remy being my guardian angel," she said hurriedly.

Dean looked surprised for a second, and then his eyes narrowed. "Did he break up with you?"

Sophie shook her head. "No."

"Did you break up with him?"

"No."

Dean looked confused. "What's the problem then?" he asked.

Sophie concentrated on the road ahead, and she just shrugged.

"Was he angry?" Dean continued prodding. "He didn't try to hurt you, did he?"

Sophie gave him an exasperated look. "Of course he didn't do anything," she snapped. "It's Jack. He'd never do anything to hurt me."

"Well what's the problem then?" Dean asked again.

Sophie wasn't sure she wanted to talk to her dad about this. After all, it was her dad. But her only girl friend was the twin sister of her boyfriend, who therefore had a huge bias, and so she couldn't really talk to Jamie about it. So she just took a deep breath. "Well…the conversation sort of ended with him telling me that he loved me," she said, rather quickly. "And I said it back to him. And then he left and he hasn't talked to me at all since."

Dean sat back in his seat, and Sophie knew that this was way out of his league. Dean had maybe loved two or three women in his whole life, and likely had no clue how to approach that topic with his sixteen-year-old daughter. But she could see that he was going to try. "Have you tried to talk to him?" he finally asked.

Sophie sighed. "No. He said he needed some space. Which, given my history of being the crappiest girlfriend in the world, wasn't the craziest of questions. It's just…." She groaned, not sure how to vocalize her feelings, or if she even wanted to. "What happens next?" she asked. "I don't…I don't think I want him to love me, and I don't think that_ I _want to love _him_. But I do. And it sucks."

"Why?"

Sophie scoffed. "Are you kidding me? How many times have I almost died in the last six months? And if he stays with me, and things start to go to hell…how long until something kills him?" She shook her head, feeling the despair creeping up on her again. "It's just not fair to him, to keep him around," she said softly. "It's not fair, and it's not right. If I _really _loved him, I'd just kick him to the curb like a total bitch and make him think that I hate him. That way maybe he'd stay safe."

Dean didn't know what to say. He could see how much this had been torturing her, how much she'd been letting the thoughts consume her. And she was right; it wasn't fair. But not just for Jack. For Sophie, too. It wasn't fair that she had to make such important decisions about her relationships when she was at an age where romance and dating were supposed to be lighthearted and fun and free.

But she was a hunter's daughter, and 'fair' was not a word that often applied to their lives.

When he didn't say anything immediately, she added, "You know what I did after we told each other 'I love you' and he left the coffee shop?" She gripped the steering wheel tighter, remembering the day with astounding clarity. "I started crying, because it all just felt hopeless to me. It was so awful, the waitress came by and gave me my drink for free because she thought we'd broken up."

"You shouldn't have to think like this, kiddo," Dean finally said.

"Doesn't matter if I shouldn't have to," she said firmly. "I _do _have to think like this. And I think I've figured it out." She took a deep breath, and said the words out loud that she had been thinking for a while. "I think I have to break up with him," she said, and Dean heard her voice waver. "It's…it's the right thing to do."

"Kiddo…."

She glanced over at him. "Dad, don't. It's the right thing to do, and you know it."

He didn't say anything for a long time. They had probably driven for another five minutes in silence, interrupted only by the soft playing of a Coldplay song in the background.

Finally, Dean spoke up, unable to let the conversation end like that. "Sophie, don't let the life I chose to live define yours," he said. "Jack's already in this. Even if you break up with him, if Beelzebub wanted to use someone to hurt you, he'd still be on the chopping block. So don't say breaking up with him is the right thing to do, because it's not. Only break up with him because you don't want to be with him. But if you _do_ want to be with him…keep him around, because you deserve a life where you get to keep the people you make relationships with. That's all I want for you."

At that moment, Sophie happened to arrive at a stop sign, and she slowed to a halt. But instead of moving forward after checking for oncoming traffic, she put the Impala in park. The road she was on was completely empty, which was characteristic of old Kansan roads, and she just knew she couldn't go any farther.

She looked at Dean with slightly watery eyes. "Yeah, well, no matter how much you want that for me, I can't have that. I _don't _get to keep the people I make relationships with, because if that were true, you wouldn't be dying in six months. And if you die in six months… Dad, what am I supposed to do?"

And then she started crying, and Dean quickly unbuckled and slid over to her, and he wrapped an arm around her and brought her head to his shoulder, and she clung to him, crying her eyes out. He rubbed her shoulder, feeling the despair weighing heavily on his heart, too, but the words he spoke next came from a place of genuine sincerity. "I ain't going anywhere, kiddo," he said roughly. "We're going to figure this out, and we'll be okay."

"How?" she cried into his shoulder, barely even cognizant of both of Dean's arms wrapping around her to hold her tight to him.

"I don't know exactly," he replied after a moment. "But I do know one thing."

"What?" she asked through her tears, trying to pull herself together but ultimately failing.

He gave her a quick kiss on the temple and stared out at the long, empty stretch of highway stretched before them still. "I am not ready to leave you yet, Sophie. Not without one hell of a fight."

* * *

Later that night, when Sophie was in her pajamas and ready to go to bed within the next half hour or so, Remy appeared in her room.

She didn't even flinch when he popped up. One second, she was sitting on her bed, braiding her hair into pigtails, and the next Remy was standing right in front of her like he'd been there for hours.

Her hands froze in her hair, and then her eyes narrowed. "You're basically the last person I want to talk to right now," she said stiffly.

"I know," he said in an understanding voice. "I wouldn't have come if it wasn't important."

She continued to glare at him, but she resumed finishing her braid. "Well, what is it?"

"Dean told me what you learned from Taylor and Crowley, and I told Castiel," Remy said. "He agreed that something might have happened during our bonding as guardian angel and charge, as well as during your healing after the car accident, that might have damaged your supernatural cloak."

Sophie straightened up, unable to keep holding her glare. "Does that mean…someone has to redo it." She didn't like the sound of that, especially remembering how much it hurt the first time around.

But Remy shook his head. "I talked to Castiel," he said. "And he thinks I should be able to fix it on my own, without it hurting. I just have to…well, you need to let me inside of you."

Sophie smirked. "If my dad heard you say that, you would not be alive anymore."

Remy rolled his eyes. "You know what I mean."

Sophie frowned. "I don't exactly understand what it is you need to do."

He nodded. "The basic idea is that you give me permission to use you as a vessel for a short amount of time. The damage done to your cloak is easy and painless to fix from the inside out."

She gave him a long look. "If I give you permission… that means you can see all of my thoughts and feelings right? More so than you already can?"

Remy gave her a long look. "I could," he admitted. "But I wouldn't access anything that wasn't completely necessary to making sure Beelzebub can't find you anymore. I hope you know I respect you more than that."

For some reason, that made Sophie blush a little bit. "I know," she said quietly. She stood up from her bed. "I just need to talk to my dad about it first. He should know."

Remy nodded. "Okay. Call me once you talk to him." And then he was gone.

She made her way out of the room and into the main room, where she saw Sam sitting at the table tinkering away on his laptop, with Dean nowhere to be found.

Her uncle looked up and grinned at her as she walked in. "Hey," he said. "You about to turn in for the night?"

"Soon," she replied, a little distractedly. "Is Dad around?"

"I think he's doing a full inventory on the Impala since he let someone other than himself drive it today," he teased, but he could see that Sophie looked a little fidgety. "What's up?"

Sophie went and sat down by Sam. "I just talked to Remy," she said. "He knows how to fix my broken cloak. He said that if he does it, it should even be pretty painless. But I wanted to let Dad know beforehand."

At that, Sam straightened up and closed his laptop. "Wait, really? It can be fixed?"

Sophie nodded. "Yeah. It's just, in order for him to do that, he sorta…needs me to give him permission to use me as his vessel."

She said the last part quickly, but Sam seemed to hear every word. His eyes narrowed a little bit, but they were thoughtful. "Are you okay with that?" he asked after a moment.

Sophie shrugged. "He promised not to invade any more of my privacy than was necessary. He said he was just going to get in, fix what needs to be fixed, and get out as quickly as possible." She paused for a moment. "And I trust him. A lot. So yeah, I'm okay with it."

Sam nodded. "Well, as much as I don't like the idea of you being an angel's vessel, even for a short period of time, I trust Remy, too." Then he chuckled. "Good luck with Dean, though."

"Can't you talk to him?" Sophie pleaded. "I'm seriously out of the mental mojo that it takes to fight him."

Sam laughed. "Why don't you lure him in here and we'll tag team him?"

She grinned. "Sounds fun."

He lifted his hand in the air and she gave him a high five before walking past him and making her way down to the garage.

She could hear the sound of an old crackly stereo playing Led Zeppelin before she entered the room. When she did, she could see that Dean was hiding underneath the hood of the Impala, and she smirked. "You seriously don't trust that I didn't run her into the ground?" Sophie called out.

Dean withdrew from the car, looking over at her and shooting her a small grin. "I'm just being cautious," he said. "She's strong, but she needs tender love and care."

Sophie just shook her head and grinned. "You're pretty ridiculous when it comes to that car," she said with a small laugh.

"One day, I'll teach you how to fix her up," Dean told her. "Then you'll understand."

She smiled. "Okay. I might hold you to that." There was a moment of comfortable silence in which Dean dumped some tools back into his bag and Sophie tried to come up with a good way to bring the conversation back to what she wanted. "So, um, Dad—"

Immediately, his head shot up. "Uh oh. That's the 'I want money' voice, isn't it? I've heard that every child has an 'I want money' voice."

She shook her head. "When I use that voice, you won't even know it hit you before you're handing over the cash," she joked. Then she got a little more serious. "No, actually, I wanted to talk to you about my whole broken cloak issue."

Dean's face immediately fell. "Why? What happened? Are you okay?"

Sophie let out a long breath. "Why do you always assume something's happened to me when I try to bring up important subjects?"

Dean gave her a look. "Given your history, that's usually the safest assumption."

She just shrugged. "Well, no. I'm fine. But Remy came by to talk to me, and he told me that he talked to Cas and apparently, whatever's wrong with my cloak should be pretty easy and painless to fix."

The look of surprise on Dean's face quickly turned suspicious. "What's the catch? There's always a catch."

She tried to play it off like she was completely blasé. "Well, it'll be really quick, but Remy needs me to let him use me as a vessel in order to—"

"Are you kidding?" Dean snapped. "No, there's a better way to do this than having him wear you like any old meatsuit—"

"You know, maybe there _is_ a better way," Sophie cut him off. "But this is the quickest, and to be honest, if I have to go one more day being constantly under someone's watchful eye I am going to go completely insane. And…I don't know, maybe you have still have some reservations, but I trust Remy. I wouldn't be alive if it weren't for him, and he promised he wouldn't do anything other than fix the cloak."

Dean shut the hood of the Impala and rolled his sleeves back down, looking conflicted. "I'll talk to Sam, see what he thinks."

Sophie grinned. Hook, line, and sinker. "Sure, that sounds fair."

As they made their way out of the garage and towards the main room, Dean said in realization, "You've already talked to Sam about this, haven't you."

She shrugged, trying not to grin. "Maybe."

"And he's already on your side, isn't he."

"No comment."

"That's not fair," he complained. "Mr. Stanford and Ms. Puppy Eyes versus me is a totally unfair matchup."

"Give the people what they want, Dad," she sighed dramatically. "It's the only way to go."

They walked into the main room to see Sam still tinkering around on his laptop, as usual. He looked up as Sophie and Dean walked in, and he pretended to be mildly confused. "Oh, hey guys, what's up?"

"Cut the crap, dude," Dean shot at him. "I know you two have been…conspiring against me."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Call it what you want, Dean, you usually need a little persuasion when it comes to decisions about Soph."

Dean nodded, looking over at Sophie, who was stifling a yawn. "You know what, what the hell," he sighed, sitting down at the table. "Call up Remy, Soph. I'm fine with him fixing you up as long as he tells me everything beforehand."

"Really?" she replied in utter surprise. That was easily the quickest victory she'd ever achieved in an argument with her dad.

"Yeah," he grumbled. "I don't want to give that demon bastard one more day to find you, so let's just fix this now."

Sophie nodded, grinning. "Okay." She paused. "Uh, Remy—"

"Here."

She turned and saw her guardian angel leaning against a bookshelf to her right, a serious look on his face. His green-grey eyes were zeroed in on her. "Hey," she said lamely.

He flicked his eyes over to Dean. "I'm assuming that since she called me, you're okay with this?" he asked.

Dean's jaw was taut, but he nodded. "What exactly are you planning on doing?"

Remy shrugged. "I was thinking that I would screw around with her mind, make her think she's actually a panda bear instead of a human being." When Dean didn't seem to appreciate the humor, Remy recanted. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Look, all I've got to do is get inside access to her soul, and then I can fix what's broken nice and quick and be out of her in no time. I'm guessing it'll take all of a minute, max."

Dean thought for a moment, and seeing nothing to really argue about, he simply nodded. "Okay. Fine. But if this doesn't work, you'll have to answer to me, got it?"

Remy nodded. "Aye aye, captain." Then he lifted himself up from where he was leaning on the bookshelf, and sat down in a chair at the table. "You should sit, too," he told Sophie, who immediately walked over and sat in the chair next to his, turning her body towards his.

He looked directly into her eyes, and suddenly her heart rate started to pick up. She was nervous. She trusted Remy, but letting him have access to the deepest recesses of her mind and soul…that was scary.

But then his hand covered hers warmly and gently, and his gaze softened a little, becoming less intense and intimidating. "I promise, Ace, I'm just going to fix the cloak and be done. Quick and painless."

She gulped a little bit and nodded, finding a little bit of comfort in his gaze. "Okay," she managed to breathe.

He looked at her with steady eyes for a moment longer, as if to make sure she really was ready, and then he closed his eyes. In a second, Sophie heard his voice inside of her head.

_Do you give me permission to use your body as my vessel?_

Her heartbeat was jumping all over the place, but she closed her eyes and thought, _Yes._

She didn't quite see what happened, since her eyes were shut tight, but one moment she was aware of a warmth flooding through her body, and an impossibly bright light that shone white even though her eyes were closed, and then her consciousness was no more.

* * *

When Sophie woke up, she felt…good.

It was the first time in a long time that she hadn't woken up feeling some sort of negative emotion. She was well-rested, and peaceful, and comfortable, and overall, just _good_. She let out a small sigh of contentment and sat up, stretching and yawning. She almost felt like a Disney princess, so awake and renewed that she could probably start singing and any nearby birds would find their way into her room and make up her bed.

"Good morning, Sleeping Beauty."

She looked over to see that Dean had been sitting by her bed in her desk chair, which he'd pulled over from her study area so that he could be close to the bed. His face was tired and a little concerned, but his eyes were warm and relieved, evidenced by the slight smile on his lips. "G'morning," she sighed. Then her eyes widened as she called to mind the events of the night before. "Wait, it's morning? How did that happen? Where's Remy? Did he fix—"

"Relax, kiddo," Dean chuckled. "You're fine. Remy was true to his word. He fixed you up in no time and then got back into his own body, but whatever he did zonked you out pretty good. You slept for eleven hours."

"Eleven hours?" she exclaimed. "Jeez."

"Yeah," he said, leaning back. "So how do you feel?"

"Amazing," she replied honestly. "Like I woke up and could finally breathe again."

Dean grinned in relief. "Glad to hear it, Soph. Maybe things are finally looking up for us."

"Yeah," she said, grinning back. "Maybe they are."

Dean glanced at her clock. "How about I make pancakes, you do your whole girl-gets-ready thing, and later we'll maybe do some training, keep those reflexes sharp?"

She nodded. "Sounds like a plan."

He got up and left the room, and Sophie threw the covers off of her and swung her legs off the bed. Before she got up, though, she took a moment to breathe in and take in the moment, and she smiled.

It was the beginning of a new day.

Maybe, just maybe, things might _really _start looking up.

**Will they look up? Won't they look up? Stay tuned next Saturday to find out more! ~ Lacey :)**

**(PS-people wondering about potential sequels and stuff like that...I'll start posting polls and asking your opinions/suggestions as this story draws to a close. But I promise, there's still a lot left to this one, so one step at a time!) **


	74. Chapter 74: The Riddle

_Chapter 74: The Riddle_

Four months later, on a brisk spring afternoon, Charlie returned.

Sophie had just pulled into the bunker's garage after a long day of school, which had consisted of a group project presentation, a math test, and track practice. She was exhausted, both mentally and physically, and she needed a shower desperately.

She turned off the Jetta, which she had finally gotten up the courage to start driving after that day in the Impala with Dean, and hopped out, locking the car over her shoulder as she rushed into the bunker. Sam and Dean were on their way back from a basic salt and burn case they'd found in Minnesota, and they were supposed to get back later in the evening. She glanced at her watch as she slung her backpack onto her bed. It was six, which meant she had about three hours to shower and get a majority of her homework done so that she could actually spend some time with them before she went to bed.

And that was something Sophie did a lot of, nowadays. Making sure she prioritized spending time with her family over everything else. Because they were now a little less than two months away from Beelzebub's deadline, and hadn't heard anything to help their case.

Sophie showered in five minutes and got dressed in sweatpants and one of her track T-shirts, slinging her wet hair up into a ponytail and hunkering down at her desk, ready to start writing her American lit paper. She grabbed the text they'd been reading, _The Waste Land _by T.S. Eliot, and sifted through it, trying to figure out the words to craft her essay. She tinkered around on her laptop for about forty-five minutes, finding that Eliot was actually much more difficult than she had anticipated.

She finally got up a little while later, craving a cup of hot chocolate, and shuffled her way into the kitchen. After filling her favorite mug up with hot water from the Keurig that Dean had finally bought her out of guilt for sleeping with April's mom, and after adding the hot chocolate packet, she stirred it all together aimlessly and let her mind wander to _The Waste Land _and her essay. It was all going to be about disillusionment with modern society and the fragmentation of the world at hand, which Sophie could relate to. Lately, she'd definitely felt like the whole world was just spinning and spinning and not even paying attention to the fact that there were greater problems at hand. So she could empathize with Eliot and his views on a sick, wounded world that had little hope for the future. As sad as that was.

She felt a little more ready to write the essay, and was about to go back to her room to finish it, newly inspired.

And then there came a banging on the bunker door.

Sophie jumped, some of the hot chocolate falling onto her hand and scalding her skin. She did some quick math in her head, and there was no way that Sam and Dean were back this early, and even if they were, they never knocked.

Sophie opened the drawer in the kitchen that she knew held a gun and grabbed it in her hand, knocking the safety off and then slowly making her way to the main room and up the stairs towards the door. Hesitantly, she glanced through the peephole to see who was _still _banging on the door.

But when she saw who was standing on the other side, she squeaked in excitement and threw the door open without any reservations. "Charlie!" she exclaimed.

The taller redhead looked at Sophie fondly and smiled broadly. "'Sup, bitchette!" She went in for a hug, and then stopped. "Are you seriously holding a mug of hot chocolate in one hand and a handgun in the other?"

Sophie looked down at the objects in her hands, looked back up, and shrugged.

"_Such _a Winchester," Charlie sighed, rolling her eyes. "We'll hug it out when that gun's safely away from where it could kill me."

"I'm not going to shoot you, Charlie," Sophie replied.

"Accidents happen, short stuff," Charlie said, and they both began walking down the stairs. "Where's Shaggy and Scooby?"

"On their way home," Sophie said, leading Charlie into the kitchen, where she quickly put the safety back on the gun and tucked it away. "They should be back in about an hour."

Charlie gave Sophie a mischievous grin. "Wanna get drunk again while we wait for them to come back? We can play a new drinking game and this time it can be for watching Star Wars."

Sophie snorted. "Yeah, I don't think so. That hangover was the worst experience ever. And I've had some pretty crappy experiences."

Charlie laughed. "Just takes practice," she said. "So whatcha been doing, Sophie?"

Sophie grabbed her mug of hot chocolate and they made their way to the main room, where they both sat down at the table. "I've been busy with school, and track, and student government," she said. "And right now I'm writing an essay on T.S. Eliot's _The Waste Land_."

Charlie made a gagging sound. "You're only in high school and they're making you sift through all that."

Sophie just shrugged. "I mean, I like it."

"Of course you do. Nerd, through and through, just like me."

"With more of an affinity for Han Solo than Princess Leia," Sophie added, laughing.

"Damn straight, sister," Charlie said, laughing.

Sophie sat for a moment, taking a long drink of her hot chocolate, and then she looked up at Charlie. "So…if you don't mind me asking…what're you doing here?"

Charlie's eyes sparkled. "Why do you think I'm here?"

Sophie's heart pounded uncomfortably. "Did you…find something? That might help my dad?"

The spunky redhead smiled widely. "I want to wait until everyone's here," she said. "I'm pretty proud of myself."

Sophie managed to shove her questions down for the next hour as Charlie drilled her on her life, on Jack ("Well we had this sorta-kinda fight a while ago, but now we're doing great, I go to his house for dinner every week, he comes here and Dad doesn't kill him, we've got a great thing going"), on Remy ("He likes to pop in whenever the hell he wants and scare me, but it's almost endearing now"), on Jamie ("She thinks that I should wear eyeliner, but when I tried to do that I almost poked my eye out, so now she's leaning hard on eyeshadow"), on Sam ("He keeps dropping these subtle-as-a-bomb hints that he wants me to go to Stanford but I don't think he realizes that Stanford is _Stanford_ and it's basically impossible to get in"), and of course, on Dean ("He's alive, which is nice").

She'd forgotten how nice it was to have Charlie around, especially when they were both sober.

An hour and half later, mid-conversation about their favorite breed of puppy, Sophie heard the bunker door open.

She immediately beamed. "Dad?" she called out.

"That would be me," she heard Dean's voice ring out. "I am the dad."

"How come she never asks for 'Sam'?" she heard her uncle grumble on the way down the stairs.

"It's because I'm clearly the favorite, Sammy, you coddle her too much for her to respect you," Dean explained lightly.

"Oh, please, you gave in to her demands for a Keurig approximately ten seconds after she asked. And don't even get me started about those ridiculously expensive rainboots you caved into buying..."

Sophie and Charlie were laughing as the two of them made their way down the stairs. "I missed you, too, Sam," Sophie assured him.

"Me too," Charlie chimed in.

Both the brothers looked up in shock. "Charlie!" Sam exclaimed.

Charlie bounded up and crushed Sam in a hug before letting go and doing the same to Dean. "How're you fellas holding up?" she asked.

"Well we just killed a ghostie and saved two teenage boys from certain death, so all in all, I'm feeling pretty dandy," Dean said, but his gaze was settled on Charlie steadily. "Why are you here, Charlie?"

"So quick to the punch," she sighed, but she was smiling. "I don't blame you. I _have _been off the radar for a while."

"Did you find something?" Sam asked, dropping all of his bags on the table, Dean following suit. They were travel weary, clearly, but Charlie's appearance had certainly injected a bit of urgency into their demeanors.

"I did better than find something," she said, and she grabbed the bag she'd brought in with her and pulled out a file. "I got the whole damn ritual translated."

Dean, Sam, and Sophie all stared at her, as if she'd just spoken some strange foreign dialect of a weird language that no one could understand. "Are you sure?" Sam finally asked, the first to get over his stunned silence.

"Quite positive," Charlie said. "It took me ages, but I slept my way to the top of this weird scholarly cult in the middle of freaking nowhere and managed to track down a guy who knew a girl who had delivered the baby of another woman whose husband's favorite mistress knew this language. It's all there in black and white, and also a bit of red because I spilt some fruit punch on it. But still it's all there, take a look."

Dean and Sophie were still frozen, but Sam took the file that Charlie held in her outstretched hand and opened it up.

He flipped through a few pages, eyes widening, and then read off the page. "_Never is, always will be. Never seen, never achieved. Bottomless hope, refueled with each moon. Take this, destroy it, and your soul will renew._" He looked up, baffled. "This isn't a ritual, it's a poem."

Charlie nodded. "It's more of a riddle, I think, but yeah, more or less."

Dean's eyes narrowed. "Great. Wonderful. I freaking hate riddles. Only the really sadistic bastards use riddles."

Sophie finally spoke up. "Well, it's a start," she said, her voice unable to mask her desperate hope. "We'll figure it out, Dad. And then we'll take whatever it is the thing says we need to destroy, get rid of it, and then we'll save your soul."

Dean looked down at his daughter, at the steely resolve in her eyes, and he deflated. "Fine. But I'm telling you now, there's a reason I barely passed high school English. I don't do poems, or fancy mumbo-jumbo talk, or anything like that."

Sophie snorted and then grabbed the papers out of Sam's hands. "Well, luckily for you, I've read everything from Shakespeare to Milton, so maybe I should take a crack at it."

"Be my guest," Dean said. "God knows you're smarter than I'll ever be. You, Sam, and Charlie should give it a go."

Sam gave Dean a look. "It's your soul on the line, Dean, maybe you should be a little more proactive."

Dean shrugged. "You figure out what the hell that ritual haiku nonsense—"

"It's not a haiku," Sophie mumbled under her breath.

"—really means, and then I'll go out and destroy whatever the hell needs to be destroyed. How's that for proactive?"

Sophie rolled her eyes. "So stereotypical. All brawn, no brain? Seriously, Dad. Be a little more original than that."

"If that was supposed to hurt my very tender feelings, it worked."

"Alright, friends," Charlie chimed in brightly. "I think that as wonderful as this conversation is, I'm going to head out."

"What?" all three Winchesters exclaimed in surprise.

"No, Charlie, you just got here!" Sophie complained.

"Yeah, Charlie, come on, at least stay the night, get some food in your stomach, a cup of coffee in the morning," Sam insisted.

Charlie shook her head, grinning sadly. "Unfortunately, a friend of mine called me a few times while I was overseas and said he has a teeny ghost problem at his new house. I should get over there ASAP and try to help him. I just had to stop by and give you this first."

Dean's eyes narrowed. "You shouldn't be hunting by yourself."

The young woman just rolled her eyes. "Always overprotective, Dean. I'm a big girl. I was just in the Middle East for months tracking down a translation to your lifesaving ritual. I'm fine on my own." Then she smirked. "But don't you worry, if I ever need help, you'll be the first I call."

Dean didn't look very happy about the idea of Charlie going off on her own, and neither did Sam. Sophie didn't get it. She sort of idolized Charlie and her unique combination of lovable and adorable quirkiness and hardheaded independence. She didn't see how Sam and Dean couldn't see that the woman was a forced to be reckoned with, not to be taken down easily.

But it was hard for Sam and Dean not to recall the little tech girl that Charlie had been when they had met, who knew everything about Dungeons and Dragons and nothing about monsters. It was strange to see her like this, like a capable hunter. It was a little unnerving. And also a little sad. Dean wished that somehow, there was a way he could have prevented her from becoming a part of this life.

Kind of like how he wished the same thing about Sophie.

Finally, Dean just released a long breath. "Alright. But you call us immediately if you need anything, okay? And we'll be there."

She grinned. "I know." She embraced him tightly, and then offered Sam and Sophie hugs, too. "Hey, bitchette, you call me if you ever need a break from these human testosterone factories, okay?"

"Will do," Sophie said with a small grin.

Charlie smiled and grabbed her bag, talking as she made her way up the staircase. "Alright. I'll still work on the ritual on my end, see if I can find anything else helpful. We're not gonna let you get blasted to oblivion, Dean." She got to the door, and turned back, offering them the Vulcan salute. "Later, bitches."

And then with an opening and shutting of the door, she was gone.

* * *

A week later, the three Winchesters were off to Palo Alto, California.

They were finally cashing in on Sophie's Christmas gesture, and they'd sectioned off the weekend to go tour Stanford.

For some reason, the whole thing made Sophie feel a lot more uncomfortable than she thought it would. She felt like maybe they should have been working on solving the riddle as opposed to driving the twenty-four hours that it would take to get to Palo Alto. Not only that, but she also found that thinking about a future that she was so unsure about kind of scared her.

But when she had brought up potentially postponing the trip until they figured out the riddle, both Sam and Dean just told her to shut up and get in the car. So she did.

When they first pulled up to Stanford's campus, the first thing she realized was that it was gorgeous. Sunshine, palm trees, permanent shorts and T-shirt weather. But the second thing she realized, and the much more prominent one, was the look on Sam's face. It was a strange, twisted familiarity and wistfulness, and suddenly the tinge of discomfort that Sophie had felt at coming all the way here turned into pure regret. It was cruel of her to bring Sam back to the one place where he'd had a little bit of freedom from hunting, where he'd lost his monster-less future and the girl he loved.

They were all standing, about to walk into the building where the tour was supposed to start, and Sophie immediately blurted out, "We don't have to go in, Sam."

Sam glanced over at her in surprise. "Soph, of course we're going in. We drove a whole day for this."

She blushed a little bit. "I just…I know that coming back here can't be…_easy _for you…or, uh…."

A look of understanding crossed Sam's face, and he placed a gentle hand on Sophie's shoulder to command her attention. "Look, I loved my time here. Wouldn't trade it for pretty much anything. It just wasn't…it was never supposed to be the end of the line for me. But you…you've got the world at your fingertips, Soph, and this could be the start of that. And you know, whether you end up coming here or going to the community college down the road… I'm going to be proud of you. So is Dean. Hell, you've already accomplished more than Dean ever did in school."

"Hey," Dean interjected, but more affectionately than forcefully.

"So don't worry about how I feel coming back here," Sam said to Sophie, grinning and squeezing her shoulder before letting go. "Because I'll tell you straight up that all I feel is proud, okay?"

Sophie smiled. She was realizing more and more each day that she was so incredibly lucky to have the two most selfless people in the world on her side. "Thanks, Sam."

Dean cleared his throat. "Well, now that we've decided the twenty-four hour drive was worth it, let's go learn some information about higher education, shall we?"

Thirty minutes later, they were touring the campus. The tour guide was a tall, leggy blonde that apparently played volleyball for the school and spoke with a slight southern lilt, and Sam had to practically smack Dean on the back of the head to make sure his gross older brother kept his eyes above sea level. Sophie didn't really pay much attention to her dad's antics, knowing that they were ultimately harmless, although she did sneak a sly "She could be April's mom's hotter older daughter" into his ear while the guide was going on about the school's esteemed athletic program. That sobered Dean up right away and caused Sam to snort in laughter.

As they walked around campus, Sophie found herself getting excited. Not just by the idea of Stanford itself, but the idea of college. Of a life after high school. Of meeting new friends and studying what she loved and being an independent person. And while the thought of not living with Sam and Dean anymore was bittersweet, it wasn't like she'd never see them again. They could visit her, and she could visit them, and it would be like any normal family with a student going off to college.

All they had to do to get there was make sure Beelzebub and his insidious plans were no longer a part of the equation.

Easy enough.

After an hour of touring, with Sam adding his own little comments to Sophie off to the side about the best places to study, the best places to grab lunch, and the best places to hang out with friends on weekends, the three Winchesters were finally ready to leave campus. They stopped by one of Sam's old college haunts, a little diner off campus not far from where they'd parked, and grabbed some food before they hit the road again.

"So, kiddo," Dean started before he sunk his teeth into a ginormous double cheeseburger, "what'd you think?"

"I think that I probably have to kick ass senior year, but this place would be awesome," she said, taking a sip of her chocolate and banana milkshake. "I mean, I want to keep my options open, but right now, Stanford takes the cake."

"Good luck finding anywhere better," Sam scoffed.

"Alright, college boy, let the girl go where she wants," Dean said. Then he looked at Sophie. "Got any other places on your mind?"

Sophie shrugged. "Just based off of where other people are applying, I've got a tentative list in my head. A couple stretches, like Harvard, Yale, Vanderbilt and Notre Dame, and a couple slightly safer options, like UNC Chapel Hill and Wake Forest, and then there's always Bethel and Kansas State and University of Kansas that are close to home—"

Both Sam and Dean looked a little surprised. "Seems like you've been giving this a lot of thought," Sam noted.

Sophie shrugged, the feeling of discomfort creeping back up on her again. "I mean, before when I was with Steve, the thought of college sort of kept me going, you know? Like while maybe life sucked then, at least I had something to look forward to. I haven't thought about it as much in the last year or so, but I mean, it's been in the back of my mind I guess."

They were quiet for a little bit, and Sophie was afraid that maybe, for some reason, her talk of moving away for school had somehow offended Dean. But then he started talking, a certain degree of pride in his eyes. "Well, I say scratch all of Kansas off of your list, because you're going to get into every damn school you apply to. All the Ivy Leagues are pretty awesome I guess, Duke's cool, Vanderbilt's name is too long, and Notre Dame is in Nowhere, Indiana. Stanford, clearly, very good. UNC and Wake Forest, both in North Carolina, so you'd like that I'm sure—"

"Dad," Sophie laughed, cutting him off but happy that he wasn't too touchy about the subject. "I'm not making any decisions now, obviously. That was a very rough list. Right now I'm just trying to make sure I do well in high school."

"Good," he said gruffly, stuffing some fries into his mouth. "You're not allowed to move away just yet."

"Aw," Sophie teased. "Did somebody grow attached to me?"

"No," Dean said with his mouth full of fries, and he swallowed. "I just like that you keep the bunker tidy. There have been consistently clean dishes since you showed up, and I'm not ready to let go of that."

Sophie smirked. "I'll leave you a sponge, some soap, and a step-by-step guide titled How to Wash Dishes for the Adult Who Doesn't Know How to Be an Adult. You'll be a pro in no time."

After a while longer at the diner, Sophie, Dean, and Sam said their goodbyes to Palo Alto and were on the road. Sam and Dean had discovered a case in Louisiana that needed their attention, and they needed to drop Sophie back off in Lebanon before they headed out.

As they drove homebound, Sophie thought a lot about their trip. It'd been good to get a taste of what life might be like after high school. It'd also been bittersweet.

And while Sophie now had a lot to look forward to, there was one thing that had to be done first.

Simply put, in order to live the life she wanted, Beelzebub needed to be stopped.

No matter what the cost.

* * *

Far, far away from Palo Alto, California, in a ritzy penthouse apartment in Raleigh, North Carolina, a handsome middle aged man sat at a desk with his hands folded and his eyes closed.

He was thinking. He had done lots and lots of thinking over the course of the past several months. He had thought about plans and the people who might thwart them almost nonstop since setting foot on the earth, and tonight was no different.

He had acquired all but two of the necessary ingredients for his ritual. The blood of fifty innocents…that had been easy. Almost child's play. The bone of an unborn king had been harder, requiring a bit of insidious power and time travel, but overall it hadn't been too difficult to get. The willing soul was accounted for. Of course, he expected some retaliation from Dean Winchester, but after his most recent run-in with the man's charming daughter, he doubted the human could be of any real danger to him. No, not after he'd pushed the girl to her breaking point, filled her with her worst fear, touched her with just enough force to make her shake.

He actually liked her, strange as that was. Something about the way she fruitlessly tried to push past her fear was…invigorating. He hadn't been lying when he said the two of them could make magic together. He had a feeling she would be quite a lovely thing to get his hands on.

But no, the only thing he really needed to get his hands on was the wings of Heaven's most cherished. After months of research, he knew which angel he needed to target. The most cherished angel was the youngest and newest angel, a mere child in terms of angels, a young female by the name of Ariel. Beelzebub didn't worry about getting that ingredient, though. He had a plan for that.

So if he was so sure of his success, why did he feel a tinge of uneasiness?

Almost in answer, there came a small knock at his study door. He sat back in mild annoyance, and called out, "Come in."

The door opened to reveal one of his servants, a demon wearing the meatsuit of a tall, lanky redheaded professor. "Good evening, Beelzebub," the demon said in an only slightly timid voice. "I have a message to deliver for you."

Beelzebub heaved a big breath and nodded. "Go ahead."

"One of your informants called," the demon started. "They said that there's talk…of a loophole."

Beelzebub, for a moment, was confused. "Excuse me?"

"A loophole to the ritual, sir," the demon continued, clearly getting more and more nervous. "Apparently, Lucifer's informants working on the outside for him were all very pleased when you tried to kill the Winchester girl, because it indicated that you were not aware that she was the loophole to your plan."

Beelzebub's eyes narrowed. "How is she the loophole?" he snapped. "The only use that girl has for me is that she is one of two people in this world that Dean Winchester would break necks for, and that will serve me well."

"I don't know how, sir," the demon said. "I think that it would be written in the finer text of the Ritual of the Stars, and I also think it has to do with the metaphysics involved with—"

Beelzebub, however, immediately understood what the loophole was. And in his sudden rush of excitement, he snapped his fingers harshly, and the demon in front of him let out a gargled scream and dropped dead on the floor, blackness oozing out of his mouth.

"I have no need for servants who _think_," he said distastefully, looking in annoyance at the body now splayed out on his favorite rug.

Then he pulled open a drawer in his desk and pulled out a stack of papers with all of his notes on the Ritual of the Stars. He turned pages quickly until he found the one tiny line that he had thought of upon hearing the news of this potential loophole.

He read it once. He read it again, to make sure. He even read it a third time, just in case maybe he had misinterpreted it again like he must have the first time. Once more, he read it, this time just to revel in the fact that it was there.

And then Beelzebub laughed. Because he knew what this loophole meant. He knew how this completely changed the game.

And boy, was he ready to play ball.

**Guys. The next two chapters are going to be very fast paced and filled with so much new information and just get ready to put your thinking caps on because it's going to be a wild ride.**

**That being said...I hope you liked this! Bubby's up to no good, as per usual. Get ready... ~ Lacey :)**


	75. Chapter 75: Morgen

_Chapter 75: Morgen_

When Sophie finally figured out the Ritual of Fire, it was just a few weeks until the deadline.

She was sitting with Cas, watching a James Bond movie. Sam and Dean were off on a hunt. They'd been hunting a lot recently, per Dean's request, as he wanted to feel like he was accomplishing something with the time he had left, seeing as they were making no headway with the ritual. They'd come back to the bunker a few times, staying for about a week to celebrate Sophie's seventeenth birthday, but other than that, they were pretty on the go.

As for Sophie, everything other than her home life seemed to be slowing down. The school year had drawn to a close—her last final exam had been that morning, and just like that, she had completed her junior year of high school.

Coincidentally, that night was also the night of the infamous Bash. Apparently, a student losing their life at the previous one did nothing to prevent the tradition from continuing, and so the whole student body was going to party the night away at an abandoned train station on the outskirts of Lebanon. Sophie, however, had no interest in going. Despite pressure from Jamie and Harry, she'd firmly decided not to attend this year.

Jack, of course, was completely fine with her not going. Things between them had been much better since she'd confessed the whole Remy thing, and Sophie had taken Dean's advice and hadn't broken up with him, simply because she loved him too much to do that. So they were still together and doing fine, and while Jack was going to the Bash because he wanted to make sure that Jamie didn't go overboard like she had the year before, he completely supported Sophie's decision to sit this one out.

So, while the rest of the school was getting drunk and dancing in abandoned train cars, Sophie and Cas were watching movies.

She hadn't wanted to watch a movie. She'd told Cas that they needed to work on the riddle some more, because they were really coming down to the wire in terms of time. But Cas had given her a steady look and said, "You have been working on the riddle every spare waking moment that you have, little lion. You are taking a break."

And so they pulled a DVD out of their collection, started up the popcorn, and sat down in their usual spots to watch the movie.

The Bond film they were watching was _Tomorrow Never Dies_, and Sophie had already seen it about five times, so she couldn't quite pay attention to it. Instead, she was going over the riddle again in her head, despite the fact that Cas had told her to take a break.

_Never is, always will be. Never seen, never achieved. Bottomless hope, refueled with each moon. Take this, destroy it, and your soul will renew._

As she watched James Bond empty a round of bullets into some random enemy's chest, the riddle played on a loop in her head.

_Never is, always will be…._

_ Never is…._

Suddenly, she jumped up from her seat, staring at the screen. "Tomorrow," she said in an almost dazed voice.

Cas looked confused, pausing the movie quickly. "What?" he asked in confusion.

"Tomorrow," she repeated, looking back at Cas in a frenzy. "The riddle. Tomorrow. Tomorrow never is, it always will be. You can never see it or achieve it. _Refueled with each moon_…each day generates a new tomorrow." Then she frowned, shaking her head. "Wait, no, that makes no sense. You can't destroy tomorrow. Can you?"

Cas' brow was furrowed, and then his eyes widened. "Morgen," he said in knowing.

It was Sophie's turn to be confused. "Huh?"

"Morgen," he repeated. "It's the word for 'tomorrow' in German."

"Was German even around when this ritual was invented?" Sophie asked.

"No, but to whoever created this, time is quite relative," Cas said, pacing back and forth as his mind worked at the speed of light. "It could have been a powerful witch that knew how to jump through time or something of the sort. But that's not important, what's important is that it's not saying we need to destroy tomorrow, it's that we need to destroy Morgen."

"I don't understand," Sophie said, utterly confused.

"Morgen is an enchantress," Cas explained. "One of the oldest on earth, predating King Arthur. You might have heard of her in terms of her most formal title, Morgen le Fay."

Sophie raised an eyebrow, unconvinced. "I don't get it though. This ritual, which was written in one of the most ancient languages on the planet, uses the much more modern language of German to translate it into a word that is the name of a mythological character that falls somewhere on the timeline in between the time of the ritual and the origination of German in its most modern translation. I'm sorry, Cas, but chronologically that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever."

"That's the _point_," Cas tried to explain, and he looked excited, like he'd finally figured out the world's hardest puzzle. "You're a human, so your understanding is limited, but time is... accessible. It is able to be manipulated and bent, and for a being powerful enough to create this ritual, it would have been easy to pull so many different characteristics of the ritual from different times. It's actually very clever, because anyone with normal means could never in their life make the connection. But luckily, I am an angel, and therefore have a whole universe of knowledge at my disposal."

Sophie was still a little bit in shock. "So…let me try and get this straight. The answer to the riddle is _tomorrow_. The translation of _tomorrow _is _morgen_. And Morgen—or, rather, the super nice lady from the Magic Tree House Books—is some old witch that that we have to kill in order to save Dad's soul?"

Cas nodded, albeit it a little unsurely. "Morgen is an enchantress, not a witch. And I have no idea what you mean by your books regarding magical arboreal homes. But mostly, you're correct."

Sophie crossed her arms and thought hard for a moment. "Is this Morgen woman…good? Would killing her be outright murder?"

Cas shook his head. "I have never encountered her, but from what I know, she was not a pleasant person. She dabbled in necromancy and demonology, and rarely deviated from the darkest forms of magic. She caused much death and destruction in her prime, and even though she's stayed off the radar recently…there's still a lot of blood on her hands."

"Great," Sophie sighed. "She's probably ridiculously powerful, and it's going to be impossible to kill her."

Cas shook his head. "You're right that she's powerful," he said. "But she's human at the core. She can be killed by human means." He stood up. "I think we need to cut the movie short tonight. I will do what I can to locate Morgen. You call Sam and Dean and tell them to come back home from their hunt. Tell them it's time to finish this business, once and for all."

Before Sophie could even blink, he was gone.

* * *

Remy had very little time in his angelic life to care about anyone other than Sophie. She was forever on his mind, and a whisper of her soul was always alive in his own, speaking to him, letting him know that she was safe and content.

It was a part of being a guardian angel that had annoyed him with past charges; he'd always resented never being truly alone, never having quiet in his own mind. Especially with that Russian man he'd protected before, who had awful thoughts about murder and debauchery at all hours of the day, Remy had wished he could simply shut off their connection.

But with Sophie, he didn't know how he'd live if he couldn't feel her presence at every moment. Being able to tap into her consciousness filled him with relief and a sense of peace, not resentment or annoyance. He liked that she was connected to him, liked that he knew if she was okay or if she wasn't. Because if she wasn't okay, then he could help her, and if she was, than he was at peace.

So yes, most of his time was occupied by watching over Sophie. But he still had a little time to deal with his own affairs, and he usually delegated that time to visiting the closest thing he as an angel could have to a best friend or relative—the angel Ariel.

There was not a celestial being that didn't love Ariel. She was the youngest of angels, a mere infant in the eyes of some of the old powerful ones like Michael and Lucifer. As it was, she retained the body of a young teenager, no older than fourteen, and she charmed everyone with her youth and kindness. Remy was lucky enough to be her closest companion, and he hers.

Remy and Ariel met mostly on evenings, when Remy knew Sophie was with Cas or with her family or with her boyfriend. Usually, when she was with Jack, he kept an ear especially open just to make sure nothing caught her by surprise, but for the most part, his nights were free to meet with Ariel.

Ariel stayed in Heaven for the most part, only traveling to earth to see Remy. She worked for an angel whose job was to send prophetic dreams to certain humans, a humble job that she loved dearly. Whenever Remy met with her, she spoke in great earnest about the dreams she had been crafting, about how beautiful and hopeful they were. Remy would smile and listen to her, knowing that the higher authority angels never let her craft bad dreams, only good ones. Everyone coddled Ariel in Heaven. And Remy didn't blame them.

He waited for her at their usual meeting spot, his little homey cabin that sat snuggly in the woods a little off the main highway. He thought about Ariel, about the little blonde ponytail that she always wore and hazel eyes bright with the joy of the dreams she had been crafting that day.

"Thinking about me, Remy?" he heard a sweet voice say to his left.

He grinned as he saw Ariel looking at him from where she stood by his front door. Remy was sitting on the couch, his crappy laptop sitting in front of him. The one part about going undercover as Sophie's guardian angel at a high school that really, really sucked was that he had to turn in homework. And while it was all mindlessly easy for Remy's inhumanly intelligent mind, it still was a huge use of his barely existent free time.

But he grinned at Ariel. "You know me too well, Ari."

She smiled brightly at him, and then frowned at the laptop in front of him. "Still doing homework, Johnny Boy?"

He threw her a glare. "Well apparently if I don't do it, I'll get thrown out of school. And I sort of have to stay there for now, I guess."

Ariel walked over and sat by Remy, looking at the screen for a moment and then back at him. "All this time that we've met over the past few months…you don't talk about her all that much."

"What?" Remy asked in surprise.

"Your charge," Ariel said briskly. "The girl, Sophie Winchester. You don't talk about her. You've told me every detail about every charge you've ever had, the good and the bad, but you don't talk about her."

Remy thought back. He supposed that he hadn't brought Sophie up to Ariel. He wasn't quite sure why. "Oh," he finally said. "Well, she's a good person. I feel like I'm doing something meaningful by protecting her."

Ariel considered what he said, and then her eyes widened slightly. "You…you care for her?" she asked.

"Of course I care about her, it's my job to keep her alive," Remy pointed out.

"No," she said, hazel eyes wide as saucers. "You have romantic feelings for her!"

"No," Remy said sternly. "She is a human. That sort of behavior is outside of the natural order. And she's just a child. So no."

Ariel sat back, but didn't look convinced. "She's seventeen, right?" she said. "That's hardly a child by history's standards."

"It's a child by Heaven's standards, and any union would be an abomination by Heaven's standards," Remy said sharply. "Ariel, just stop. I care about her. That is the extent of our relationship."

Ariel just sighed. "I just want happiness for you, Remy," she said quietly. "I feel like these past couple of months are the most alive I've seen you in…ever."

Remy thought back. He tried to remember a time where he'd ever felt more like he was doing something right, like he was where he needed to be, and he couldn't. "I am happy," he said. Then he shot her an accusatory look. "But I can be happy and not have feelings for a human. A human who, by the way, is already in a relationship with another good human."

Ariel shrugged. "Most human relationships are fragile," was all she said.

Remy was about to respond when a knock came at his door, and both he and Ariel shot to their feet.

"Were you expecting company?" Ariel asked in a hushed tone.

"Yes, I have the milkman drop by my off-the-grid cabin on alternate weekends," Remy shot at her sarcastically.

Without warning, the door to the room was blown open, and Remy immediately cursed and drew his angel blade out, taking a step in front of Ariel, who had also drawn her weapon. Remy was thinking a million miles an hour, trying to understand what was happening, who was here, how anyone had found him and what they might be coming for.

And then when the dust settled, Remy was eye to eye with the one being that he hated most in the world. And that being was smiling at him.

"Eremiel!" Beelzebub boomed, blue eyes bright. "So great to see you again! Last time we met I believe you just stopped a wonderful spectacle from happening in the woods. What a shame, if you had waited a little longer then your Sophie and I would have put on _quite _the show for you—"

Remy felt his vision go red, and he couldn't listen to another word. He launched himself at Beelzebub, deftly wielding the angel blade so that it was aimed straight for the son of a bitch's heart. But the demon just looked bored, and with a wave of his hand he pitched Remy into the wall of his cabin. He crashed into a small bookcase, momentarily dazed.

Beelzebub strode inside. "I didn't come for you, boy, so stay out of my way." He turned his head towards Ariel, who looked shocked but stood with her blade in hand, at the ready. "Hello, Ariel," Beelzebub said coyly. "Word on the street is that you are Heaven's most cherished angel."

Remy's head snapped up. "No," he said quickly, understanding why Beelzebub was here now. "I won't let you take her."

Beelzebub smirked. "Sorry, my boy. She's my final ingredient."

"Remy, what is he talking about?" Ariel called to him.

"It's nothing personal, Ariel," Beelzebub chimed before Remy could say anything. Then he looked over at Remy thoughtfully. "You know, I could use you, too. It'd be good to have you on hand for when I need to draw Sophie Winchester out from the shadows. You two seem to have quite the connection, I doubt she'd leave you in danger."

Remy stood up from where he'd been thrown, rushing as quickly as he could to take his spot by Ariel. "You won't get away with this," he said. "All of Heaven opposes you. And more importantly, so do the Winchesters. You won't live for much longer."

Beelzebub smiled. "We'll see about that."

And then he clapped his hands twice, and Remy found himself on the ground, incapacitated by a sudden onslaught of pain. Vaguely, he could tell that Ariel was in the same state beside him, her hands grabbing her head as the most sickening agony rushed through her body. She was screaming, and he was crying out in pain, and the last thing Remy saw before his vision went black was the look of pure victory on Beelzebub's face as he strode towards them, confident step by confident step.

* * *

Sophie, Sam, and Dean were all sitting at the table in the main room in silence.

"Let me get this straight," Dean said, the first to break the quiet. "I've gotta kill this fairytale character, and then I'm home free."

Sophie shrugged. "I don't know if _home free _is the word. But it would definitely save your soul from Beelzebub using it in the ritual."

"What about Sam's soul?" Dean mused. He looked over at his brother. "No offense, but I don't trust you to not sign your soul away like I did if Beelzebub starts threatening people again."

"I've done some thinking, and some researching on the ritual and Morgen," Sophie said. "I think that if you guys can somehow manage to both be holding the same blade when you stab Morgen…you should be good. I think. Probably." She threw her hands up into the air. "Look, I don't know. But we're sort of down to the wire and we're going to have to bank on that. If it doesn't work, Sam, you better keep your soul locked up tight, because we're not going through this again."

Sam looked troubled, but nodded. "If it came down to it, I'd kill myself before letting him threaten people to get consent from me," he said straightforwardly.

Dean looked annoyed. "Why didn't I think of that?"

"Well it's too late for you to be having suicidal thoughts, Dad," Sophie snapped, unhappy at his self-loathing tone. "You've already committed your soul to him, so if you kick the bucket now you're just making it easy for him."

"Now that we've established suicide isn't an option, for now," Sam cut in, only halfway joking, "how are we finding Morgen?"

"Cas is on it," Sophie said.

"I just don't get it," Dean said thoughtfully, sitting back in his chair. "This Morgen chick…seems pretty random to me. We've had the players in this game listed out pretty clearly so far…Beelzebub, Lucifer, Lucifer's bitch Taylor…. How the hell did Morgen come into this?"

Sophie shrugged. "It's not like this ritual was made specifically for the purpose of defeating Beelzebub. I've been reading up, and my guess is this ritual was commissioned by Lancelot, who was like the one dude that wouldn't put out for Morgen, because apparently she was super beautiful and usually got any guy that she wanted. But since Lancelot wouldn't sleep with her, she went on this rampage, and this ritual was Lancelot's way of trying to encourage some crazy religious zealot to go and try to kill her and win a newly purified soul as payment." She shrugged again. "I guess no one ever succeeded."

"Encouraging," Dean muttered.

"Oh, please, like you two haven't managed to kill things that no one else managed to kill before," Sophie said, rolling her eyes. "Besides, Cas said Morgen should be able to be killed by human means. Sounds like a piece of cake to me."

"Says the girl who couldn't do three pull-ups this time last year," Dean scoffed.

"Hey!" she snapped defensively. "Upper body strength has never been my forte, okay? No need to tease me about it."

There was a brief moment of lightness where both Sam and Dean chuckled, likely both thinking back to the time when Sophie had been doing more work-outs to get in semi-hunting shape and had been stuck hanging from a tree branch, unable to pull herself up for the first pull-up. Sophie just sighed, but grinned.

She couldn't help but be in a slightly good mood. Finally, there was light at the end of the tunnel. Finally, she could actually see a future that didn't involve her dad getting ripped from her life.

And just at that moment, when she was thinking that there might finally be a happy ending to her crazy story, she could feel a searing lightning bolt of pain rip through her head.

She didn't realize that she was on the floor, yelling, until she recognized that both Sam and Dean were trying to yell over her cries to figure out what was happening. She couldn't focus, couldn't feel Dean holding her and trying to find some way to help her, could barely breathe, could only lie on the cold floor as agony tore through her skull and images began to flash in front of her eyes.

Remy.

Remy writhing on a cold stone floor, in more pain than she'd ever seen a living person be in before in her life. Next to him was a small blonde girl, who didn't even look old enough to be in high school, lying unconscious on the floor with a nauseating amount of blood staining her back and the floor beneath her.

And then she heard the voice she knew she could never forget. "Eremiel, my boy, it's easy. Tell me where the Winchesters hide and all of this pain can end."

She watched in horror as Remy yelled out a stream of profanities directed at Beelzebub, and the demon just laughed. "That's okay, my boy. Now that I've got dear Ariel's wings, I have time to devote to figuring out just what it takes to make you squeal."

And then there was another burst of pain and the images dissipated, leaving Sophie with fireworks of agony going off in her head and the sensation that she was falling down an endless void.

And then it was over.

She didn't even realize that the pain was gone and that her screaming had stopped until was able to finally hear Dean's voice. "Sophie? Sophie, sweetheart, look at me. Are you okay?"

She opened her eyes, not even knowing that she had squeezed them shut, and lifted her head, seeing both Sam and Dean down beside her, Dean on his knees and Sam squatting on his heels. She was shaking, her eyes wide, and even though she wasn't in pain anymore she could still see the images of a screaming Remy in her mind and that was painful in and of itself.

"Sophie," Dean said, and she turned to look at him, seeing the raw concern in his eyes. He looked desperate, like he just needed to hear her say something. "Talk to us, Soph, what just happened?"

"I think…," she started in a soft voice, and then she cleared her throat, wrapping her arms around herself. She tried again, speaking in a somewhat stronger voice, "Beelzebub has Remy," she said. "And some girl. I think she's an angel, and her back was all bloody, and he said that now he had her wings. And he was t-torturing him…." Her voice faltered, thinking back to the awful sounds Remy had been making, and she shuddered. "Oh my God, if he has the wings…then all he needs is your soul. Oh my God, Dad, this is bad, this is really really bad…."

Dean placed a hand on Sophie's knee. "Hey, Soph, don't worry, okay?" he said automatically. "Cas is going to find this Morgen girl and we'll figure everything out."

"Remy," she moaned, hiding her head in her hands and letting her body fold in on itself. "He's being tortured. I could feel it."

Sophie was too busy replaying the images in her mind to see Dean and Sam exchange a worried look. Dean wouldn't admit it, but he'd grown to somewhat like the punk angel that had been diligently protecting his daughter for months, and the thought of him being tortured by the likes of Beelzebub… Dean wanted to stop it. But he knew there was no way to do that without putting everyone in danger, since they didn't have the Ritual of Fire complete yet. Not to mention the fact that they had no clue where he might be.

Sam sat down next to Sophie and put a gentle arm around her, trying to coax her out from behind her hands. "Soph, we'll find him. We'll save him."

She looked up, distraught. "Beelzebub was asking him where we were. He wants to find us, now that he has everything that he needs for the Ritual of Stars. We're on a running clock here."

Dean just stared at Sophie in hopelessness, torn between wanting to know more and wanting to protect her from these painful images. "It's okay," he said mechanically. "It's okay, we'll figure it out."

"And Remy's tough, Soph," Sam added. "He's not going to give you up for anything."

She took a few deep breaths, and then shook her head. "I just don't understand…how did I see those things? That's not usually how this whole guardian angel thing works. Usually all I feel is a little…it's kind of like a tug, a little nudge that lets me know he's there. I've never felt what he's feeling or seen what he's seeing."

Dean looked over at Sam. "You're the dude who used to have visions," he pointed out. "This one's all you."

Sam threw him an annoyed look. "Yeah, and you're the one who's buddy-buddy with angels," he said. "I don't know anything about this."

"I have an idea," another voice said, and all three Winchesters' heads snapped up to see Cas standing in front of them, wearing a deep frown.

But more surprising then his sudden appearance was the tall, beautiful woman standing behind him.

She had a waterfall of shiny black hair that fell down to her waist and bright green eyes. She wore a long black skirt and a ruffled blue top, and she stood silently behind Cas as he addressed the Winchesters. She watched them with mild curiosity, a thoughtful look on her gorgeous face. "The connection between a guardian angel and his charge can only be felt by the charge if the angel is in great distress," Cas continued offhandedly. "It is a way to warn the charge, to let them know that they too might be in danger. Unfortunately, that seems to be the case."

Sophie was too busy staring at the stunning woman behind Cas to absorb all that he'd said. "Um, Cas," Sam said slowly. "Who the hell is that?"

Cas cleared his throat, looking mildly uncomfortable. "Sam, Dean, Sophie…this is, uh, Morgen. Morgen le Fay."

* * *

Immediately, Dean moved so that his entire body blocked Sophie from Morgen's vision. "Dude, what the hell?" he yelled at Cas. "What did you think you were doing, just bringing her here?"

Cas crossed his arms. "I'd appreciate it if you gave me a chance to explain, Dean."

Dean looked over at the woman behind Cas. So far, she hadn't said a word, and she looked rather harmless. He gave Cas a sharp look. "Talk."

Cas looked back at Morgen. "She was easy to find," he started. "Many in Heaven have known her whereabouts for centuries. So I sought her out and found her and…. Well, she's not exactly the horrible creature I thought she was."

At that, Morgen took a few fluid steps forward until she stood by Cas. "The angel told me about your predicament," she said in a strong, sweet voice that sounded like pure music. "He told me about your soul, and he told me about your daughter. I've come to willingly surrender."

Dean looked over at Sam in disbelief to see that his brother clearly reflected his emotions. He looked back at Morgen. "Look, lady, I don't trust you. What's going on here?"

Cas opened his mouth to speak, but Morgen cut him off. "I've lived a long, long time, Dean Winchester. And I've done a great deal of horrible, unforgivable things. I've slaughtered. Not just murdered—slaughtered. I did awful things in the name of love and romance and power. And now…I'm still living, because I enchanted myself to keep living, but the truth is clear. My time, the time of my highest self, has no place in the present world, and I am the last remnant of it. I'm very much so ready to die. And if I could save one person with my death, much less the whole world…maybe, just maybe, I will have atoned for some of my sins."

Dean just shook his head. "I can't just run you through with a knife if you're so... unthreatening."

Morgen's eyes narrowed. "I could certainly become threatening, if you wanted. But I'd rather not."

Dean glanced over at Cas, who gave him a look that said _This is an opportunity you can't afford to waste._

Dean looked back at Morgen. "You want to die?" he asked. "You actually _want _to die?"

She gave Dean a sad look. "More than anything."

Dean thought it through, and then he nodded. "Sophie, go to your room."

"No, Dad—"

"_Now_."

There was a dangerous intonation in his voice, and so Sophie didn't question it further. She stood up, stared at Morgen for a few long seconds and looked like she wanted to say something, but then she just nodded and walked out of the room. Dean waited until he heard her door open and shut until he said anything. "Sam. We have to do this together."

Sam looked uncomfortable. "Dean, this isn't right."

"You think I'm happy about the nice hot woman begging for us to kill her?" Dean snapped at him.

Morgen stepped forward. "If you two are concerned about killing someone innocent, you needn't be afraid. I'm far from innocent." She took another step forward, leaving her just a step away from both of them. "I can show you."

"I don't think—" Sam started, but then suddenly she placed a soft hand on each of their cheeks, and immediately their minds were clouded over in images.

Death. Brutal, disgusting, barbaric death. Bodies strewn across marble floors, men, women, children, all nothing more than bloody masses on the ground. And among them, with a cold look of victory, stood Morgen, blood staining all of her features and matted in her hair, with a grim smile on her face.

And then the images were gone and they were back to reality. Sam and Dean stood in shock and revulsion as the woman in front of them wiped a few tears from her eyes. "So you see," she said. "You're not killing an innocent person. You're righting a terrible, terrible wrong. You're avenging the people that I slaughtered, and at the same time, you're saving your soul and making sure your daughter has a father to watch over her. Not to mention you're taking a huge step to keeping the world safe from Beelzebub."

Dean looked up at Cas, who gave him a short nod, and then at Sam. His brother looked uncomfortable, but resolute.

Here was their ticket out. Here was the ace up their sleeves.

And so Dean squared his shoulders. "Okay."

The look of pure relief on Morgen's face only solidified his decision, and from a small slit in her skirt she withdrew a long, decorated dagger. "It was Lancelot's," she explained as she handed it to Dean, who took it gently in his hand. "My one request is that it ends me, as it should have centuries ago."

He nodded, gritting his teeth as he extended the knife towards Sam. Wordlessly, Sam gripped the blade with his brother and stood before Morgen.

Dean looked down at the woman, and even though he had seen the destruction she had caused, could see how badly she wanted to no longer exist, he still felt an awful twist in his stomach. "I'm sorry," he said, unable to not say anything at all.

"Don't be," she replied honestly.

Sam and Dean shared one more glance, and then together, they drove the blade swiftly through her chest.

Her body immediately lit up, like it was burning from the inside out. She didn't scream, didn't even gasp. She just smiled contently, like the most relieved person in the world, and then in what seemed like no time at all, her body disappeared in a flash of light.

And then both Sam and Dean were on the ground, knocked out by the sheer force of heat and light that shot straight through their chests.

Dean couldn't have explained the sensation if he had tried. It wasn't necessarily painful, just extremely unpleasant. He felt naked in the truest form of the word, completely exposed and open. And then it felt like his bare, raw skin was being raked over by a rough cloth, creating so much friction that it burned and licked at his body like burning yet cleansing fire. It was the strangest sensation, because while it was uncomfortable, Dean was overwhelmed with a feeling of rightness, like the stains of so many of his terrible decisions were being brutally scrubbed off of his soul.

And then it was over, and when Dean sat up and looked over at his brother, whose expression mirrored Dean's feelings of renewal and bewilderment, he didn't even have to ask Cas to see if the ritual had worked. He just knew.

Today, finally, after months and months and months of stress and despair and loss after loss…they had finally won.

**I know you're probably in just one giant state of WTF right now and I totally get it. I know that introducing Morgen and slaying her all in one chapter is sort of a lot to process…but honestly I just didn't want to drag this out any longer, so I cut some stuff and rearranged it and got it to all somewhat fit into one chapter. If it seems a little all over the place, that's why.**

**BUT. I think you guys will be glad that I did. Because I'm telling you, if there has ever been a chapter to watch out for, it's the next one. You're going to want to tune in next week, folks. **

**Shit hits the fan and it is ****_not_**** pretty. **

**Until Saturday ~ Lacey :)**


	76. Chapter 76: The Most Beautiful Day

**THREE CHEERS FOR THE SEASON 11 PREMIERE! WOOOO!**

**And now we return to our regularly programmed weekly update:**

_Chapter 76: The Most Beautiful Day_

It was the most beautiful day that Kansas had seen in a long while.

Blue, cloudless skies, the sun shining pleasantly down on green grass and tall trees. Sophie had experienced the most peaceful run of her life in the morning, jogging through the woods. She had left her iPod home, deciding instead to focus just on the sound of her heart beating and the nature around her. And the day was surely beautiful.

But despite how the day looked, Sophie was a wreck inside.

For starters, they had no idea how to find Remy. Sophie was wracked with a constant sense of fear and worry knowing that her guardian, her confidant, her friend was trapped somewhere with Beelzebub. But there was nothing she could do. The vision thing that had happened when he'd first been taken had happened a few times afterward, particularly in her dreams. And while they weren't quite as physically painful as the first time, they still were taking a toll on her sanity.

And on top of her overwhelming fear and helplessness that she felt over Remy's situation, they still didn't know what exactly was going on with Beelzebub. Sam and Dean's souls were both safe from Beelzebub's clutches—Cas had verified this with a cursory angelic check—but that didn't mean that Beelzebub didn't have something else up his sleeve.

If there was one thing the Winchesters knew, Beelzebub _always _had an ace up his sleeve.

At the very least, he was bound to retaliate once he found out that his precious ritual ingredient was no longer viable. Sophie was sure there'd be some retribution, she just didn't know what.

Of course, she'd voiced her concerns to her family, but Sam and Dean had just told her not to worry. For the first time in nearly a year, they had the upper hand. And they didn't want to squander it.

At that point in time, Sam and Dean had decided that their first priority, besides keeping Sophie the hell away from Beelzebub, was rescuing Remy. Somehow, someway, the kid-slash-angel had become a part of their weird, motley family, and he had done his part of the deal in terms of keeping Sophie alive. It was only fair that the Winchesters do everything within their power to try and return the favor.

If for no other reason than the fact that Sophie was going crazy knowing that he was in pain, and that for every day that Remy was being tortured by Beelzebub, Sophie could feel his agony and distress secondhand.

So that was what ran through Sophie's mind during her jog. She wanted Remy back, safe and sound and within name-calling distance of her. She missed him being around, popping up when she didn't want him to. She missed his reassurance, his rare but full laugh, his tilted smile. She missed him calling her Ace.

But more than she missed anything, she was terrified for him.

She cut her run off early simply because her mind was starting to stress her out too much, and running wasn't helping her calm down like it usually did. So she called it quits and made her way back to the bunker, yearning for a quick shower and a hot cup of coffee.

When she got inside, she immediately found Sam and Dean both awake and holding mugs of coffee as they sat at the main table, talking to each other. They looked up at her as she walked in. "You look gross," Dean noted.

She shot him a look. "Thanks, Dad, I can always count on you to boost my confidence."

"Hey, I think you inherited quite a lot of beautiful genes from yours truly, I just think that your post-workout look is a little…rough."

She stuck her tongue out at him as she walked past. "Yeah, next time I'll try to make sure I don't break a sweat on my five mile run in the summer heat."

"Good idea," Dean said.

She rolled her eyes and made her way into her room, jumping quickly into the shower and spending as little time as possible washing herself off before hopping back out and changing into jeans that she rolled up a few inches above her ankle and a light gray crew-neck T-shirt. She slipped on some white sneakers, flipped her hair into her usual ponytail, and made her way into the kitchen.

She opted to skip over using her beloved Keurig in favor of the half-filled pot of coffee that was sitting next to it. Despite the fact that she'd pushed and pushed for the Keurig in an attempt to be on trend like the rest of the coffee drinkers at school, Sam and Dean insisted on using their regular old coffee pot on a daily basis, and she couldn't justify wasting the perfectly good coffee. So she grabbed a mug out of the cupboard and took the pot off of the burner, absentmindedly humming an old Backstreet Boys song, and began to pour herself some coffee.

And that was when she was slammed with the worst vision she'd had yet, complete with pain worse than the first time.

The mug and the coffee pot fell to the floor and shattered, and her body crumpled to the floor as bright spots began to fill her vision.

Reality completely faded away as she saw Remy strapped into a chair, his clothes and skin and hair caked in dried blood. His eyes were steely as he stared in the distance, somewhere where Sophie couldn't see. "If you think I'm still going to tell you anything, you're dumber than you look."

And then she could see Beelzebub in low light, leaning up against the opposite wall. "I don't need you to tell me anything," he said. "See, as I'm sure you know, I have eyes and ears all over the world, in every nook and cranny of this planet. Don't you realize I don't need your information? I just need _you_."

Remy's scowl disappeared in favor of a look of anger. "She's not stupid enough to come try and find me," he said in a low voice. "And even if she was, the Winchesters would never let her."

"I don't know, my boy. Something tells me there's a little more hardheadedness to that girl than you might credit her with. She'll find a way."

"She has no idea where we are," he snapped. "It doesn't matter."

Beelzebub laughed, and Sophie felt a wave of pain hit her in the head as suddenly her mind was filled with flashing images of a winding road and a path in the woods. And then she was back in the room, and Remy was bleeding from a fresh wound to his chest. "We're at your cabin," Beelzebub said slowly, deliberately. "We're just shielded by a touch of demon power, courtesy of yours truly. But I'll lift the veil for darling Sophia when she comes, don't you worry."

"She won't come," Remy spat, fire in his eyes. "Why the hell would she do that? She doesn't even know where I live!"

"She does now," Beelzebub practically purred. "You see, that pesky little connection between you and the beautiful Winchester girl that allowed you to save her the last time that we met? Turns out I can use that to my advantage as well. As we speak, she can hear everything we're saying, and she can see you, broken and wounded, and her compassionate little heart will bleed, and she will come. She will find a way to come, because if she doesn't, I will kill you. And then she would have to live with that."

Remy looked livid, and his green-grey eyes flashed with a blinding hatred. His words were dripping with murderous rage. "If she comes here, and you so much as _look _at her, I'll—"

And then Remy was yelling as Beelzebub used his powers to caused blood vessels in his head to start bursting, and Sophie was crying out for his pain—and her pain—to stop, and then just as quickly as they had started the images and the pain stopped, and she was back in the kitchen, surrounding by broken glass and two very concerned Winchesters.

"Sophie?" Dean asked her, and as she slowly came back to reality, she realized that he'd been saying her name over and over again, hoping she'd respond. His hands were gently cupping her face, forcing her to look into his eyes and use his focus as an anchor. "Sophie, hey sweetheart, are you okay?"

Slowly, Sophie got a better grip on the fact that she was back in reality, and she nodded shakily. "I saw them," she said, lifting her hands up from the floor to see that there was a particularly large chunk of glass lodged in the palm of her hand. She picked the piece out in mild annoyance before anyone could stop her and watched in shock as blood started to drip down her arm at a rapid rate. "I saw Remy and Beelzebub again," she clarified, watching the blood run down her arm, not entirely convinced it was real.

Not entirely convinced any of this was real.

Sam had rushed to the cabinet where they kept a little first aid kit when he saw the glass in Sophie's skin, and at that moment knelt down next to her to help clean her up. "What did you see?" he asked as he gently dabbed at Sophie's hand with a cotton ball soaked in peroxide.

She ignored the stinging in her hand. "Beelzebub was hurting him," she said quietly. "Remy's hurt and weak, and…. I've never seen him like that before…."

"Sophie," Dean said, trying to rein her back in. "It's okay, just breathe. We'll find him, okay? We'll get him back."

Sophie's head shot up. "Wait, I know where they are. Beelzebub told me."

Dean's eyes immediately darkened. "He what?" Sophie tried to get up, but Dean placed a hand on her shoulder and forced her to stay down. "Soph, what are you talking about?"

"He said that they're at the cabin that Remy stays at. They've been there all along, just hidden by whatever creepy demon mojo Beelzebub has," Sophie explained. "We've gotta go get him, Dad, he's just a drive up the road, we've gotta go—"

Dean's expression was sharp and distrustful. "You said that he told you this," he said as Sam finished putting the bandage on Sophie's hand. "He knew you could see what was happening, didn't he?"

"Well, yeah," Sophie admitted, "but—"

"No," Dean said, shaking his head. "It's some sort of trap then. We're not going to just barge in there with nothing to go off of other than your visions—"

"They're not just visions, Dad, they're what's really happening! Beelzebub is going to _kill_ him!" Sophie yelled, shocking Dean with her tone. "He said so. If I don't go there today, he will kill Remy!"

Dean shook his head vehemently. "Too bad," he said. "There's no way in hell you're going there. End of story."

"I'm not just going to let him die!" she cried out, pushing Dean's hands off of her and standing up as best as she could on shaky legs. "You _know _that I wouldn't be here without him! We can't just leave him there!"

"I didn't say we were going to leave him there," Dean told her roughly, taking in her flustered, scared self. "I said there's no way in hell that you're going. Remy would be just as pissed as me or Sam if you went there."

"But Beelzebub said that I had to be—"

"Screw that bastard and whatever crap he's spewing into your ear!" Dean exclaimed so loudly that Sophie jumped, but he didn't back down. "You're staying here, and Sam and I are going to go save Remy. Got it?"

"Dad—"

"Sophie," he said, this time in a slightly gentler voice. "We are not going to just stand by and let Beelzebub kill Remy, okay? We owe that kid big time, and we know it. And I know you're not some burden who can't help us when push comes to shove, but please…just stay here and let us take care of it. Please."

She looked up at him, and then glanced over at Sam, whose face mirrored Dean's. She crossed her arms, feeling her stomach start to feel a little sick. "Okay," she said quietly. "Fine. I'll stay. But you two can't go and get killed, okay? We did not save both of your souls just to have you kick the bucket in the end."

Dean cracked a grin. "We'll be back, kiddo," he said confidently, and while Sophie knew he had to have doubts in the back of his mind, or maybe even in the front of his mind, she was glad that he was putting on a front of strength for her benefit. "We'll be back, with your annoying guardian angel in tow. Got it?"

She took a shaky breath. "Got it."

Over the next several hours, Sophie sat in the background as Sam and Dean plotted the best way to go into this rescue mission. She could barely listen out of anxiety, focusing instead on trying to contact Remy through her mind. Unfortunately, that seemed to be a skill that only Remy possessed, and she failed pretty miserably.

But she couldn't get the image of Remy lying dead on the floor out of her mind, and she knew that if Sam and Dean didn't succeed, that would be the only result of their attempted rescue.

So of course, she was terrified.

Later that afternoon, Sam and Dean finally seemed prepared to leave, laden with weapons and hunter paraphernalia that she was only slightly familiar with, she stood in front of the two people in the world most important to her and tried not to cry. "Be safe," she managed to say with some degree of strength in her voice.

Sam leaned down and hugged her tightly. "You know we will," he told her, stepping back and giving her a grin.

She glanced at Dean, who was staring at her intently. She didn't like that look. She didn't like any sort of look that spoke to a potential permanent parting. "Dad…."

He paused for a moment, just looking at her. Then he took a step forward and placed a hand on her shoulder, pulling her gently towards him and placing a kiss on the top of her head. "We'll see you soon," he said, and then he gave Sam a quick nod and they turned to leave.

And Sophie wanted to stop them. That, or she wanted to wait for them to leave and then sneak out and go there herself, to try and be some use to them other than sitting around doing absolutely nothing like an inadequate little girl.

But she knew being there would only distract them, would only take their focus off of Remy and on her.

And so, with a heavy and anxious heart, she stayed behind, hoping beyond hope that somehow, if God existed, he was looking down on them today. On this most beautiful day.

* * *

Dean couldn't lie. He was worried.

He couldn't look worried in front of Sophie, because she was already freaked out, but the truth was, Beelzebub was no easy salt-and-burn case. Even if the goal was just to rescue Remy and not to send that son of a bitch back to Hell, he still couldn't see it going all according to plan. He was just relying on the fact that he and Sam were pretty good at making stuff up on the fly.

But that usual tactic didn't exactly make him feel all that self-assured, especially when he had a scared daughter back home.

But he wouldn't be the man that he was if he didn't at least try to save Remy. The same went for Sam. They had to try. They had to.

Using the vague directions they had gotten from Sophie, they managed to find the little road that led from the highway to a tiny, quaint little cabin in the woods where Remy had purportedly been staying.

Dean parked away from the cabin, settling the Impala in between two large oak trees heavily laden with foliage. He turned the car off and looked over at Sam. "Recon?" he proposed.

"Recon," Sam agreed.

They both got out of the car and loaded themselves up with weapons they might need, including angel blades, guns with devil's trap bullets, and a few other deadly weapons. Dean looked over at his brother. "We'll start around back, peek in some windows, see if we can get an idea of where everyone is," he said.

Sam nodded. "Hey Dean?"

"What?"

"Let's…let's play this one safe, okay?" he said after a second of hesitation. "Nothing stupid, no pulling rabbits out of hats, just…go in when we have an opportunity, grab Remy, get out. Okay?"

Dean nodded. "This ain't a suicide mission, if that's what you're getting at," he said. "I want to get all three of us out of there alive."

Sam nodded back at him. "Good. Alright. Let's do this."

Slowly, and in a roundabout way, they approached the cabin, taking care to steer clear of windows. Tall grass brushed their jeans and they were unable to keep their boots from crunching twigs and dry leaves underneath their feet, but it didn't seem to matter. Everything remained just as still as before.

As they neared the cabin, they observed only one window in the back. Both of them crouched as low as their tall frames would allow and slowly, weapons at the ready, made their way to either side of the window. They glanced at each other, and Dean extended a hand to count down on his fingers. Once he reached zero, they both lifted their heads so that they could peak in through the window.

And what they saw…confused them.

A little girl, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old, was hunkered over the fallen form of what was clearly Remy. They could hear her yelling at him, but they couldn't quite make out what she was saying.

And perhaps most notably, in the little one room cabin, Beelzebub was nowhere to be seen.

Sam and Dean crouched back down. "I say we go in," Dean said in low voice. "Bubby's MIA and Remy doesn't look like he's in good shape."

"And the girl?" Sam prodded.

"Must be the angel Sophie was talking about," Dean said with a shrug. "The one who got her wings torn off of her. I don't think it matters either way, this might be our only shot."

Sam thought about it for a moment, and then nodded. "Alright. We go in soft though, okay? We don't want to freak anyone out if we can avoid it."

In response, Dean just started making his way around the cabin and towards the front door, Sam right at his heels. He climbed as quietly as he could onto the creaky front porch, raised his angel blade, and after glancing at his brother to make sure he was ready, gently turned the front doorknob and pushed.

It opened with ease.

Dean and Sam quietly entered the cabin, weapons raised, and were greeted by the sound of a soft female's voice. Dean's eyes zeroed in on the little girl hovering over Remy's fallen form, shaking his shoulders vigorously. "Remy, please, you need to get up, before the worst happens, please, please…."

Dean and Sam exchanged a glance, and then in a moment of gut instinct, Dean cleared his throat. "Uh, hello?"

Immediately the girl jumped to her feet in front of Remy, but not before Dean saw the awful bloodstains on her back and the wounded way in which she held herself. Even though her body screamed vulnerable and injured, and the little blonde ponytail that she wore didn't quite scream vicious, the look on her face was ferocious. "Who are you and what are you doing here?" she snapped in a dangerous voice.

Dean held his hands up in surrender, and Sam followed suit. "I'm Dean Winchester. This is my brother, Sam. We came to help Remy."

Immediately, a look of horror dawned on the girl's face. "Oh no."

Before Dean or Sam could question what she said or what was wrong, Remy twitched on the ground. "Ariel…," he groaned. "What's…."

"Remy, get up, now!" The girl—Ariel—practically screamed at him. "Sam and Dean are _here_."

Dean watched helplessly as the bleeding, broken form of Remy struggled to lift himself onto his hands and knees. Sam stepped forward, hoping to help, but Ariel just glared at him and he stepped back. After a moment, Remy hissed in pain as he managed to sit back against the nearest wall, and his eyes were squeezed shut. When he opened them, his eyes locked on Dean, and they widened.

"No," he said gruffly, struggling to move towards standing up. "No, you can't be here. Go home."

"Remy—," Dean tried.

"_Go home!_" Remy roared, and his explosion caused Sam and Dean to freeze. The angel's eyes were filled with fear. "Why do you think Beelzebub isn't here? Why do you think I'm somehow still alive?"

"What?" Sam and Dean asked in unison, confused.

Remy yelled out in pain as he forced himself to stand on his feet, and then with a great deal of concentration, he managed to heal some of his wounds, enough to keep him standing at least. Then he looked at Dean with dark eyes. "He told me," Remy said. "He told me what the loophole is. He knew you'd come here, he let me live so that I could tell you…."

Dean stared at the angel in front of him. "What is it?" he asked in dread.

Remy took a breath, trying to regain his bearings. "The Ritual of the Stars was constructed back when there were some pretty archaic ideas about men and what they did or did not own or have within their power," Remy started, closing his eyes, trying to heal more of his wounds. "Men were considered to have ownership over their families' properties, their slaves, their wives. And their children."

Dean had no idea where this was going, but he knew it couldn't be good. "I don't understand," he said.

Remy, who was getting closer and closer to full health, stood up from where he'd been leaning against the wall. "According to the fine print in the ritual, the souls of your wife and kids and slaves, if you happened to have any, belong to you," he started. "Which means when you gave consent for your soul, you gave consent for all of their souls."

Dean understood. Dean understood, and he felt sick. "No," he said, shaking his head. "No, there's no way."

"He's going after Sophie, Dean," Remy said, eyes full of dread and despair. "He's going to use her soul for the ritual."

* * *

Sophie sat on her bed in the bunker, curled up with her copy of poems by Emily Dickenson, trying to let the words calm her down. But they just weren't doing it. Instead, her mind was spiraling into the past, conjuring up images of times far gone.

She thought about the very first time she'd laid eyes on her father. She had walked inside of that diner in North Carolina, thinking that maybe her dad was somewhere in that city somewhere, but having no other clue about him other than that.

She had remembered looking at Dean and Sam, sitting over at a table, and, not even realizing who they were yet, thinking that they looked lonely.

If there was one thing that she _wasn't_ anymore, it was lonely. Sophie had felt lonely for a large portion of her life after her mom died, even when she had her friend Patrick, and it had always been a struggle.

And now she had her dad, and Sam, and Remy, and Jack, and she wasn't lonely anymore, but holy crap, did not being lonely _hurt _sometimes.

She had almost forgotten how painful caring about people could be. But now, thinking about her dad and Sam trying to save Remy's life, her heart was so full of anxiety that it physically agonized her.

She couldn't sit there and pretend that poetry was going to calm her heart, so she got up and started wandering around the bunker, hoping to find something that might take her mind off of her worry. After a decent amount of meandering, she found herself in her dad's room.

She didn't venture into Dean's room all that often. Sometimes when she got into mad cleaning moods, she'd go in and do some vacuuming or sweeping. And then there was that one time when her nightmares had been so vivid and terrifying that she'd actually slept there. But she had never really just taken a look at her dad's room.

It was pretty simple. There was a shelf behind his bed that held a few weapons, records, books, and an old radio. On his bedside table, there was an old picture of a young boy being kissed on the cheek by a beautiful woman. Sophie sat down on the bed and took the picture in her hand, smiling as she realized who it was. A very young Dean and what must have been his mother.

Sophie traced her finger over the picture, feeling a twist in her stomach. She would never meet her grandmother or grandfather, both taken away from this world by the supernatural. By what her dad hunted. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that good people could be taken away from life like that.

And now she was even more scared for Dean and for Sam, praying that they got home sooner rather than later. That they could escape the same fate as their parents, that she might be spared from the pain that they had experienced at the loss of their family.

Just at that moment, she felt her phone buzz in her pocket. She pulled it out and saw that there was a text message from Dean. _B's headed your way_, it read. Following that he'd sent her coordinates and said, _Meet me here._

Sophie frowned as her heart rate picked up. Why would Dean tell her leave the bunker after the whole spiel about her needing to _stay_ in the bunker? And why wouldn't he just call her?

But then she thought about it, and maybe he was stuck in a position where he couldn't speak, or where someone was monitoring what he was saying, but he still needed to contact her. And now that she thought about it, the Winchesters had a bit of a thing for using coordinates to convey locations.

So, resolutely, she jumped on her computer and found the location that the coordinates led to, an old non-denominational church that she passed by on the way to school every day that had been closed for renovations since the first day she'd seen it. Why he chose that church, she had no clue, but she had to trust him.

So she responded, _Be there in 10_, and proceeded to grab a few weapons that she thought might be of use before heading to the garage and jumping into her Jetta.

Her hands were shaking as she drove the car to her destination. She was annoyed at how pretty the day was, the most beautiful day she'd probably seen in months, with the sun just starting to sink behind the trees and the sky lit up in a cloudless swirl of blue and gold.

She scowled as she flew down the highway. How dare the day be flawless when she was in the middle of fleeing Beelzebub and worrying about whether or not her dad, her uncle, and her guardian angel would live to see the next day. How dare such a beautiful day exist to mock her.

She pulled up at the church, immediately wary when she didn't see the Impala out front. But maybe Dean wasn't even there yet. Maybe he was mid-rescue mission now, and Beelzebub had discovered the location of the bunker, and this was the first place that Dean could think of where she might be safe. Or maybe this place had been a backup sanctuary all along, and he'd never told her for fear of her telling someone about it and the information falling into the wrong hands.

Either way, now was not the time to stop trusting in her dad. So she took a deep, shaky breath and got out of the car, grabbing her weapons, and locking the car up behind her. She looked at the church cautiously, and with only slightly wavering courage, walked up and turned the knob on the door.

The place looked empty. Light filtered in through dusty, partially covered windows, allowing just enough visibility to see rows of pews that led up to a modest pulpit. She slowly made her way up the aisle. "Hello?" she called out softly. "Dad?" Only silence answered her, and she kept walking. "Sam? Remy?"

"Try again."

She whirled around, and even as her eyes searched wildly for the source of the person who had spoken, she never could have forgotten that voice. The one that had permeated her every nightmare, that taunted her in her sleep, that never quite left her brain no matter how much she put that day in her past.

But then she did see him, and she felt the very breath get knocked out of her from the sheer force of terror that hit her in the gut.

Beelzebub, however, had no problem speaking, his blue eyes glinting in the dusty sunlight. "Sophie Winchester," he said, smiling widely. "Just the girl I've been looking for."

* * *

Dean was certain that he had never driven so fast on the Kansan highway that he seemed to always be on. But at that moment, he was flying well above twenty miles per hour over the speed limit, rushing back to the bunker as quickly as he could.

"Why can't you sense where she is?" Sam asked Remy again.

"I told you, Beelzebub has magic at his disposal that is difficult to maneuver around," Remy shot at him from the back seat, his eyes closed in deep thought. "I'm doing my best to get around it."

"Remy, how?" Dean barked shortly, needing to talk to push down the growing fear bubbling up in his chest. "How can her soul even be used?"

"I told you," Remy said, now completely healed from all the wounds that had been inflicted upon him from Beelzebub. "When you consented—"

"No, Dean's right," Sam cut in sharply. "Maybe the consent thing is out the window, but the rest of the qualities…Sophie doesn't have. The whole _tested in the fires of Hell, has encountered Heaven, and has defeated Lucifer once before _thing…Sophie doesn't fit into any of those categories."

"No," Remy said, with a look of extreme guilt on his face. "She fits into all but one."

"What the hell does that mean?" Dean yelled at him.

Remy rubbed a hand across his face. "Her soul is connected to mine, which means that just as a part of her soul has latched onto mine, so has a part of mine latched onto hers," he explained. "I've encountered Heaven, obviously. And I fought in a battalion that defeated Lucifer long, long ago."

"But you've never been to Hell," Dean said, feeling a surge of hope. "If that's the case, then she still doesn't fit the parameters."

Remy was quiet, and Sam seemed to connect the dots faster than Dean did. "Dean… He's Beelzebub. He could always just…drag her soul to Hell and _make_ her fit into that category."

Dean felt fear as cold as ice start to shoot through his veins, and for a moment, he almost forgot to breathe.

Then Remy's head snapped up and his eyes widened. "There's an abandoned church off the highway. I think it says Lebanon Christian on the sign."

"That's just about a couple miles up the road," Sam noted. "It's been abandoned for over a year."

"That's where she is," Remy said resolutely.

Dean pressed even harder down on the accelerator.

* * *

Sophie stared at Beelzebub, trying as hard as she could to bite down her fear.

"How'd you get access to my phone?" she asked as sharply as she could. "How'd you get my caller ID to say 'Dad'?"

He smiled at her, leaning against the church doors at the back of the room. "My darling Sophie, come on. I think I'm owed a little more credit than that. You've got to understand by now, I'm not just your garden variety demon. My powers of altering perception of reality are quite astounding. I don't use them often—I prefer to make reality just as blood-soaked as my hopes and dreams. But the skill does come in handy from time to time. Like tonight."

Sophie stared at him, with no idea of how to respond. She just watched as he took slow, purposeful steps towards her, each thumping of her heart growing faster and louder in her ears.

"Do you know why I brought you here?" he asked softly, when he was just a few steps away.

Sophie started taking steps back, holding the angel blade out in front of her body. "Because you're one persistent son of a bitch?" she tried.

"You've got a mouth like your father, I see," Beelzebub said with a grin. He considered her for a moment, and then waved his hand quickly, and the angel blade flew out of her hand and skidded across the floor. He took another step forward, and she took another step back, but soon she was halted by the simple wooden altar that stood front and center in the church.

Beelzebub closed the distance between them, grabbing Sophie by the front of her shirt and pulling her towards him. With a yelp, she collided against him, disgusted at their proximity, and he leaned down to put his lips by her ear. "You're here," he whispered, "because you are Dean Winchester's daughter, and when he signed away his soul, he signed yours away, too."

Sophie was frozen. She wanted to be brave, to keep using her sharp wit to keep herself afloat, but the fear was starting to win and she felt her brain beginning to shut down. "He'd never do anything to put my soul up for grabs. He'd rather die," she choked out, and Beelzebub was so close to her that when she spoke her lips brushed by his cheek and she nearly gagged.

He pulled back from her, grabbing her by the throat gently, almost in a caress, letting his fingers curl around her throat as his palm rested right above her chest. Then he moved to step behind her, letting his fingers follow as he positioned himself behind her, his hand now gripping her neck around from behind. He tipped her head to the side and her hair fell to the left, and Beelzebub put his nose straight to her exposed pulse point. "Your father would never do that knowingly," he agreed, his murmurs sending painful chills down her spine. "But he did, nonetheless."

For some reason, the words reawakened her from her frozen fear, and she started to struggle. She launched her elbow backwards as well as the heel of her shoe, trying to find some way to loosen his grip. While both of her shots hit solidly, and would have at least shaken any other attacker, Beelzebub only laughed. "All your struggles do is arouse me, darling Sophia."

With a fearful, enraged cry, she continued to struggle against him, kicking and scratching and doing whatever it was that she could do to throw the demon off of her, but with each movement she made Beelzebub just pulled her tighter against him, until his hand was squeezing around her throat and his other arm slung low around her waist, locking her against him.

At that moment, the doors to the church were flung open, and Sam, Dean, and Remy burst into the church, weapons drawn.

"Dad," Sophie managed to choke out before Beelzebub tightened his hold on her throat.

When Dean laid eyes on Sophie, trapped in Beelzebub's wrought-iron embrace, his expression grew utterly deadly. "Let go of her," he commanded in a dangerous tone.

Sophie, seeing her family so close to her and wanting nothing more than to be right there, safe with them, began to struggle against Beelzebub again. But this time he just laughed and let the arm around her waist fall, so that he was only holding on to her neck.

"Why would I let this pretty thing go?" Beelzebub asked, moving his newly unoccupied hand to her cheek, stroking softly down her jaw line. Sophie flinched and tried to move her head away from his hand, but the hand on her throat squeezed tightly and she choked out a gasp, moving her head back to where he could caress her out of the necessity to breathe. Dean's eyes were hard and murderous, but he didn't move for fear of Beelzebub hurting her. "She's rightfully mine, now that you've made it impossible for me to use you or your brother's souls," he continued, continuing to stroke up and down her cheek as Sophie's face looked sicker and sicker. "I can do whatever I please with her."

His free hand left her face and crept over her shoulder and pulled her back tightly against his body, and she winced as the hand on her throat tightened its hold, just enough that she could still breathe but not enough that she could move of her own accord. He gently rubbed her shoulder, letting his fingers slip just a centimeter underneath the collar of her shirt. She heard Dean's strangled shout of rage and watched with fear-glazed vision as Sam grabbed his shoulder and held him back.

She tried to shrug Beelzebub's hand off of her, but he just continued to move his hands in slow, purposeful circles on her skin, and she couldn't help but whimper as his hand slipped further and further under her shirt. She closed her eyes, unable to look at the enraged yet helpless look on Dean's face. "In case you were wondering, Dean Winchester," Beelzebub said in a soft, yet reverberating voice, "I please to do a lot with her."

Dean shook off Sam's hand and took a couple cautious steps forward. "I will kill you," Dean said in a low, terrifying voice, his body practically vibrating with fury. "I will not take a single breath without planning the best way to end you."

Beelzebub removed his hand from Sophie's shoulder, and she felt him reach behind his body. She went to move, but the hand on her throat closed again. "Funny. Because darling Sophia here…she won't take a single breath ever again."

Sophie saw it coming. But not directly.

She saw it coming from the look of helplessness on Remy's face, and she saw it coming from the look of shock and horror on Sam's face.

And she saw it coming from was her father, standing not ten feet from her with a cracked, agonized rage in his eyes, like he was watching the world crumble to pieces at his fingertips.

And then she felt red, red pain, and she looked down in shock to see the bloodied tip of _synkomidí̱ _protruding from her chest and a rapidly growing red flower of blood blossoming on her grey shirt.

She made eye contact with Dean again and saw the tortured look in his eyes, and she wanted to get words out of her mouth, but all that came out was a strangled, shaky whimper as she felt all of her faculties begin to slowly, slowly shut down.

Pain. Sharp, pounding, breathless agony and a sweeping, unstoppable fatigue.

And then nothing.


	77. Chapter 77: Hey Dean

**Warning - Sadness and feelings ahead. ~ Lacey**

_Chapter 77: Hey Dean_

Sophie knew she was dead.

She could feel that a part of her, the physical part of her, was no longer there. She could feel the fact that she was only a spirit, lost in the in-between, clinging to the world but no longer a part of it.

But her memory was just as foggy as her surroundings. How did she get here? Where was her family? What was going on?

Everything around her was strange and hazy and bright, and she couldn't quite get a grip on this strange, otherworldly reality. She would have been lost in the fog if not for the fact that one moment, she was utterly alone, and the next she was looking at the kindest-looking woman she had ever seen.

She had short black hair and pretty blue eyes, and her lips turned upwards in a wistful grin. "Sophie Winchester," she said softly. "I hoped it would be much longer until I saw you."

"Who are you?" Sophie asked. "Where am I?"

"My name's Tessa," the woman said. "I'm here to take you to the next stop."

"The next stop?" Sophie asked, panicked. "Where's that?"

"I can't tell you," Tessa said sadly. "But I promise there will be no more pain."

Sophie hesitated. She didn't want to leave her dad behind, or Sam, or Remy, or her life. "But… I'm not ready," she tried weakly.

"I know," Tessa said. "And I'm sorry. But—"

Suddenly, everything seemed to grow ten shades darker, and Tessa's eyes widened in alarm. "Sophie," she said quickly, "we need to go, now—"

Sophie jumped as Tessa's sudden screech filled the air, and she watched in terror as the kindly woman was flung backwards into a swirling beam of light, out of which a tall, hulking, terrifying man that Sophie had never seen before came stalking towards her just moments later.

He had cool blonde hair and dark, dark eyes, and he looked dumb and cruel, like some strange, miscolored version of Beelzebub but with less than half the intelligence.

"Sophie Winchester," the man rumbled in a deep voice. "I'm Soneillon, of the First Hierarchy. Master Beelzebub told me all about you." His dark eyes connected with hers, and she froze, unable to look away. Suddenly, he lunged towards her, grabbing her by the hair and dragging her with him towards the swirling beam of light, so quickly she couldn't even scream, couldn't even tell when suddenly she was in the veil of the world and the next, she was in a grim darkness.

"Welcome to Hell."

* * *

Dean stared at the bottom of his empty glass. He could see a warped reflection of his unkempt face and bloodshot eyes at the bottom of it, and he immediately refilled it to the very top in an effort not to stare at himself for too long.

_It's not that bad, we can get you all patched up back home._

He didn't need to close his eyes to see the images. They danced in front of his vision at all hours, screaming at him, cursing at him, slowly sucking the life from him.

_ Sophie Winchester, dammit, open your eyes! _

He took two large gulps of the whiskey, barely even feeling the burn as it traveled down his throat.

_Sophie, baby girl, c'mon, open your eyes, just open your eyes…._

Drink.

_Open your eyes!_

He wasn't stupid. He knew that no amount of alcohol could get rid of the memories of holding his lifeless daughter in his trembling hands, her blood still warm as it coated his skin. Nothing could erase the image of her body crumpling to the ground as Beelzebub withdrew his blade, which shone brightly with her blood, and then disappeared into thin air with nothing more than a victorious laugh.

No matter how much crappy whiskey Dean consumed, he knew he'd never be able to forget the way she'd looked right at him with terrified, helpless eyes before the knife had ripped through her body, hoping that somehow, he could do something to save her.

_No, no, no, Sophie, sweetheart. I'm so sorry. Don't be gone._

But he couldn't do anything. All he could do was watch as one moment, she was alive, and the next, she was dead.

She was dead.

_Don't be gone._

Dead.

_I'm so sorry._

He took another drink, letting the memories wash over him. He deserved to be haunted. He deserved to never get another moment of peace again in his entire life. He deserved to be tortured by these images, to never have a speck of joy in his life again.

_Get up, kiddo._

After all, the only speck of joy that he'd had in his life was now dead, all because of him. All because of him.

_It's not that bad._

All because of him.

_Open your eyes._

Drink.

_ I'm so sorry._

Drink.

_We'll get you all patched up…._

Drink.

_No, no, no, no, NO—_

"Dean."

He didn't look up at his brother's voice. He just kept staring down into his now half-empty glass.

"Dean," Sam tried again. "Drinking isn't helping her."

At that, Dean's hand tightened around the glass. "Shut up, Sam."

"Dean—"

"Sam, I'm telling you, if you don't listen to me, I will throw this bottle at your face. So shut up."

"No," Sam said sternly, and at that, Dean looked up. He hadn't really been paying much attention to his brother lately, but as he looked at him now, he could see that Sam was looking rough, too. Like Dean, he hadn't shaved, and he also had bloodshot, tired eyes and lines on his face that hadn't been there before. "Dean, it's been over a week," Sam continued. "We have to do more than sit here and drown."

Dean gave Sam a sharp look. "Tell me what we should do then, Sherlock," he said roughly. "We already tried to make a deal with a crossroads demon—nothing. We tried to contact Crowley—again, nothing. We still haven't heard back from Cas. But it doesn't matter what he comes back saying. We know where she is." His voice cracked at the end.

Hell. His daughter, the innocent soul that he loved more than he could ever love anything else, was in Hell.

It was the epitome of fatherly failure. He didn't deserve to still be breathing.

But Sam just glared at him, and Dean saw that his eyes were shining. "So what?" Sam yelled at him forcefully. "So you're just going to give up? Roll over and let her rot down there? Because every second you spend getting wasted is about a _week_ she spends getting ripped apart down in the pit!"

Dean's jaw tightened, and it took everything in his power not to chuck his glass at Sam's head. "Watch it, Sam," he said in a low voice.

Sam strode forward, and in a moment of absolutely no self-control, he grabbed Dean's bottle of whiskey and hurled it towards a bookshelf. It hit the wood and shattered, glass and alcohol sparkling as they collided midair and fell to the floor. "You take one more drink of this before we get her back," Sam said dangerously, "and I'll send you straight to Hell myself."

Dean looked over with glassy eyes at the broken pieces of the bottle, blinking once before standing up. "I'm going to bed."

Sam looked exasperated. "Dean—"

"I said I'm going to bed," Dean shot at him, leaving his half-full glass of whiskey on the table, untouched. "Tomorrow we'll try Crowley again, and we'll get a hold of Cas."

Sam nodded, looking only slightly less defeated. "Okay, but we should—"

Before he could say what they should or shouldn't do, there was a buzzing sound. Both of their expressions grew dark as they observed the phone on the center of the table. Sophie's phone. And they knew who was calling. The same worried, anxious seventeen-year-old boy who had been calling for days now.

Jack.

Sam looked up at Dean. "We should—"

Dean cut him off with a yell of frustration, grabbing the vibrating phone in his hand and turning it off. He wanted to throw it, to watch in satisfaction as it shattered against the floor, but the thought of breaking anything of Sophie's hurt.

Because that meant she wasn't here to yell at him about it.

_ Don't be gone._

He shook his head and shoved the phone in his pocket. "I'm going to bed."

Without another word, he turned and disappeared down the hall that led to his bedroom. He shut the door loudly, tore off his shirt, and flung his body into his bed, hoping that he had drunk enough whiskey to knock him out for the night before Sam had interrupted him.

And after a long while of tossing and turning, he eventually fell into a fitful sleep.

* * *

_"Funny. Because darling Sophia here…. She won't take a single breath ever again."_

_ Dean watched, knowing what was happening but being unable to move in time to do anything to stop it. One moment Sophie was standing there looking scared and vulnerable, and the next her eyes were wide with pain and shock as synkomidí̱ protruded from her abdomen, slick with blood. She made the most heartbreaking sound, like a choked, gasping whimper of confusion._

_ Time stopped. It was the only way for Dean to explain the way he felt during that moment when his eyes locked with hers, when he saw the pain and disbelief and pure fear in her eyes. The moment was infinite; he stood there for an eternity, powerless to save his child from her murderer. _

_ He saw everything at once. He saw her as she walked into the diner in North Carolina, in pigtails and a beanie, still oblivious to him and to the real world. He saw her in the hospital after the incident with Sebastian, distant and wary, yet clearly longing for somewhere and someone to call home. He saw her with her wide, split-lipped smile after her victory over Ryan in the schoolyard, when he couldn't help but be proud of her. He saw her laughing over a box of pizza, talking late into the night with him and Sam about things that had seemed so trivial at the time, but now seemed to mean the world. He saw her dancing around to Aerosmith, singing with reckless abandon and freedom. He saw her sitting in her little reading nook back in the stacks at the bunker, a book in one hand and coffee in the other, unaware of the fact that he could see her and was grinning at how at home she looked. How beautiful she looked. How happy and content she looked._

_ He saw her with eyes that could barely remember what a life without her looked like. He saw her smile, he saw her laugh, he saw her live._

_ He saw the very moment that life left her eyes, when they went from bright to empty, when they fluttered closed._

_ Beelzebub roared with laughter as soon as he withdrew his blade from Sophie's body, and Dean's vision went blurry, and it went red. He bolted to the front of the church, falling at Sophie's side as the demon's laughter echoed through the cavernous room. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Remy launch himself at Beelzebub, but the demon had already vanished, and Remy vanished with him in an attempt to chase him down. _

_ But Dean couldn't focus on anything else besides the crumpled form of his daughter lying on the ground, a heinously large pool of blood growing beneath her body._

_ "No," he said robotically, an acidic terror bubbling in his stomach. He grabbed her from under her arms, pulling her immobile form across his lap, clutching her to him. "Soph, please, kiddo, please get up. It's not that bad, we can get you all patched up back home." He looked down at her face, which was devoid of expression, devoid of feeling, devoid of the spark that he had never not seen in her features. "Sophie Winchester, dammit, open your eyes!" _

_ When she didn't move a muscle, Dean felt the panicked agony in his chest start to radiate through his whole body, and he ran a shaking hand, stained red with her blood, through her strawberry blonde hair, trying to push back the many strays from her face in an effort to observe some sort of movement, some sign of life. "Sophie, baby girl, c'mon, open your eyes," he pleaded in a soft, low voice. "Just open your eyes."_

_ There were soft footsteps echoing in his ear, and Dean saw his brother kneeling in front of him, placing two shaking fingers on Sophie's neck to test her pulse. They stayed there for ten interminable seconds. At the sound of Sam's shaky intake of breath and the sight of silent tears starting to spill one by one down his cheeks, Dean knew._

_ He collapsed against the altar behind him, wrapping his arms around her, clutching her body to him. Her head fell listlessly onto his chest, and he was acutely aware of how she was too, too still, not a single red hair on her head moving in the slightest. He placed his chin on top of her head, staring off down the center aisle of the church, his eyes focused on nothing in particular except for distance, his jaw clenched tightly as his eyes stung painfully. _

_He hated how she was still warm, how she felt like she was merely sleeping in his arms, how she was so newly departed from life that her body was still emptying blood from the gaping wound in her chest, running down her body and onto Dean's hands._

"_Sophie, sweetheart, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," he said softly into her hair, still staring straight ahead, holding her tenderly, not knowing how to hold on or how to let go. "Don't be gone. I'm so sorry. Sophie…SOPHIE!"_

Dean bolted upright in his bed, his head pounding from the binge-drinking from a few hours prior and sweat beading every inch of exposed skin. He could still see her body, every detail of her. He couldn't sleep for more than three hours without reliving the worst day of his life, without seeing her go from living to dead in mere moments.

He couldn't even have nightmares anymore, because his worst nightmare was his reality.

He sat there for a few moments, catching his breath. He looked around at his empty room and was reminded of the night that Sophie had stumbled in through the door, crying and exhausted and worn down by nightmares. He remembered her tossing and turning next to him, crying out every so often, reaching to grab hold of his T-shirt in her sleep to make sure he was still there. He remembered rubbing her back, talking to her in a low voice, telling her that she was safe, that he was here, that nothing would get her.

That nothing would ever, ever get her.

He rubbed his face with his hands and glanced at his clock. It was four thirty in the morning, which meant he'd barely slept for three hours. And judging by the ruthless images that were plaguing his every waking and sleeping moment, he wasn't going to fall back asleep anytime soon.

He stood up, pushing his door open and wandering down the dark halls. He stopped by Sam's door and pushed it open just a crack, only to see Sam sprawled out on top of his comforter, twitching and moving around in his sleep, mumbling under his breath.

Clearly, Dean wasn't the only one having a hard time getting some shut eye.

He closed the door back and continued shuffling aimlessly. He thought about grabbing a new bottle of whiskey, but Sam's words reverberated in his mind. _You take one more drink of this before we get her back and I'll send you straight to Hell myself. _

Sam, of course, was right. Getting drunk wasn't helping anyone.

But it wasn't like _anything _could help anyone, at this point.

Dean was so wrapped up in his thoughts that before he knew it, he was standing outside of a familiar door.

Even though it looked like every other door in the bunker, he stared at it as if it would come alive and beat him to death. Neither he nor Sam had dared to venture inside of her room since that day, because they didn't want to see the lived-in space, the reminder that she had no idea what was going to happen, that she had just been living her life and then suddenly no longer was.

But right now, with the dream of her body in his hands still fresh in his mind, all he wanted was a memory of her from when she was alive. So, with an admittedly unsure hand, he grasped the doorknob, turned it, and slowly pushed the door open.

He stepped inside and immediately felt pain. Every single item that he laid his eyes on seemed to stab him in the chest. Her bed was unmade, a book of poems lying open and face down by her pillow. The door to her closet was open, and he could see a bit of a mess in there from where she had tried on clothes and missed the dirty clothes basket while she was rushing. Her desk was piled high with books, and her backpack was open on the floor, filled with papers and notebooks that she had yet to clear out since school ended.

His throat was uncomfortably tight, and he could only breathe through his nose because he was sure if he opened his mouth, some ungodly sound would come out of it. He made his way over to her bed, glancing at the stuffed cat on her bed that she'd brought back from North Carolina. His eyes traveled down to a little shoebox nestled in between her bed and her bedside table, and filled with a sudden curiosity, he bent down, balancing on the balls of his feet, as he took it in his hand and opened it up.

Pictures. It was filled with pictures.

He let himself slide to the floor, sitting back against the frame of her bed as he sifted through the photos. The tightness in his throat became excruciating as he saw pictures of Sophie from the time she was an infant, in the arms of the beautiful woman that was her mother, to the time where she was a gangly, awkward pre-teen, with braces and a penchant for pigtails. He stared at every single one, absorbing images of his daughter that he'd never seen before, a part of her that he'd never known.

He remembered a time where all he wanted was to somehow turn back time and make sure he had been a part of her life from the moment she was born, so that he could have known her from the very beginning. He remembered a time when all he wanted was to have those years with her when she was a baby, when she was a toddler, when she was little enough to toss up into the air and catch, when she was young enough to think boys were gross.

Now, he didn't want any of that. All he wanted was for her to have a heartbeat.

He found the oldest photo, a picture of a beautiful Caroline Gardner holding an equally beautiful infant Sophie in her arms, kissing the top of her tiny head softly, her lips curled into a soft smile. Dean's hand shook slightly as he tucked it in his pocket.

As he set the box of photos back where it had been, he looked up at Sophie's nightstand and saw her stereo. He was instantly reminded of the morning that he'd walked in and seen Sophie dancing like a maniac to Aerosmith after stealing some of his records.

He couldn't remember when he'd laughed so hard before that. He couldn't remember when he'd laughed so hard before Sophie.

Without even being fully aware of his own movements, he lifted up his hand to turn on her stereo and press play, wondering what she had been listening to, what else she had snuck out of his collection and into her own, what piece of him she'd decided to make a piece of her.

But when the music started playing and he heard the last song that she'd been listening to, the dam broke. Tears started falling down Dean Winchester's face, one at a time at first and then much faster, so far out of his control that he didn't even realize that he was crying until he felt tears dropping down onto his shaking hands. He choked on cries he didn't want to release but could no longer contain, burrowing his head between his knees and biting down on his fist to keep from screaming out in raw anguish.

And the song played softly through the room, a gentle, steady rhythm floating high above the agonized, inhuman sound of his stifled grief.

_Hey Jude,_

_ Don't make it bad,_

_ Take a sad song,_

_ And make it better._

_ Remember to let her into your heart,_

_ Then you can start,_

_ To make it better…._


	78. Chapter 78: Broken

_Chapter 78: Broken_

Dean woke up in Sophie's bed, and even though the stereo was silent, the song was still ringing in his ears.

_Hey Jude,_

_Don't make it bad…._

His head had never been clearer as he sat up, feeling powerfully energized. It was like his breakdown the night before had cut the very last string holding him back from action, and now he was ready to do, say, or kill whatever or whoever it took to bring his daughter back to him.

He got up, purposely not looking at the stereo that had been his undoing the night before, and walked out of the room. He made a quick stop in his room, where he grabbed some fresh clothes, and then he headed to the bathroom, where he showered and shaved for the first time in too long.

Then he made his way to the kitchen. He saw the coffee pot that Sophie had shattered a week before lying forlornly at the top of the trash can, and he awaited the usual feeling of agony to start ripping through his chest that happened whenever he was confronted with a memory of her.

Instead, he felt energy. Red, furious energy.

He grabbed a glass out of the cabinet and filled it with water. He didn't need coffee. As far as motivation went, his pain and rage did far more for him than caffeine ever would. He downed the glass of water and then tossed it into the sink.

When he walked out into the main room, he wasn't surprised to see that Sam was already there, still wearing what he'd been wearing to bed, his hair sticking up at all ends as he flipped through a thick book that looked liked it'd been pulled off one of the dusty shelves in the back of the bunker.

"Sam," Dean barked.

Sam looked up at Dean, and once his eyes landed on him he looked bewildered. "You shaved," he noted incredulously.

"Put that piece of junk down and go put on some clothes," Dean said. "We're summoning Crowley."

"But Crowley doesn't like—"

"I don't give one single damn about what Crowley does or doesn't like. We're summoning him."

Sam blinked once, as if gauging whether or not Dean's sudden change of mood implied that he'd gone off his rocker, and then he simply closed the book and left the room. He returned not five minutes later, dressed and ready. "Let's do this."

Thirty minutes later, they were ready to do the summoning. Their devil's trap was all set up, the ingredients were ready to go, and Dean had never been more ready to see the King of Hell. Sam began to chant in Latin, and Dean lit a match and dropped it into a bowl of herbs and other unsavory things, and then suddenly, Crowley stood before them.

He looked annoyed, but unsurprised. "Moose. Squirrel," he said coolly. "Never a pleasure."

Dean stepped forward, glaring at the man in front of him. "Is she there?" he asked, point blank. Crowley didn't immediately answer, as he was straightening out the sleeves of his jacket. "Crowley!" Dean yelled, unable to even pretend to exercise patience. "Is she _there_?"

Crowley heaved a long sigh, and then he looked up at Dean with an unreadable expression. "Yes."

Dean tried not to let his guise of strength waver, but even though he had known that Sophie was in Hell, hearing it from the mouth of the King of Hell himself was harder to take than he'd thought. "What do we have to do to bring her back?" he asked.

"There's nothing," Crowley told him flatly. "You two might have managed to break the rules a few times here or there, but I hate to break it to you lads, that's not how the world works."

Dean had to remind himself that if he launched himself at Crowley and snapped his neck, nothing would actually get achieved. "That's how the world is _going_ to work," Dean growled. "Because we are not stopping until she is back here, alive, on earth, with me."

Crowley, for the first time in the long, long time that Dean had known him, actually looked mildly sympathetic. "Look, I liked the girl," Crowley said slowly. "I tried to warn her."

"What do you mean, you tried to warn her?" Sam asked sharply.

"When you met with me on Christmas," Crowley explained, smoothing his hair down. "I told her before I left that if Beelzebub found out about the loophole, death would be the very least of her worries."

Dean looked stricken. "She never told us that."

Crowley shrugged. "She probably didn't want to make you worry. She seems like the kind of soul that wouldn't want to cause you any more stress. Stupid of her, really."

"She wasn't…she's not stupid," Dean snapped angrily.

Sam took a step forward. "Crowley…have you seen her? Is she…."

Crowley gave Sam a look. "She's in Hell, Moose," he said flatly. "She's certainly not having a magnificent time."

Dean pushed back his memories of Hell, refusing to picture his daughter going through the same unspeakable things that he had to go through. "Can't we make a trade?" he asked, trying not to sound desperate. "Me for her."

"Both of us for her," Sam cut in resolutely, and Dean looked over in surprise. "It's a deal even the Devil wouldn't pass up, both of Hell's most wanted humans in exchange for one little girl."

Crowley shook his head. "I think you're forgetting that your souls are untouchable now. That exchange couldn't happen even if we wanted it to."

"Dammit, Crowley!" Dean yelled, a vein in his temple looking like it was about to burst. "Do something! Bust her out, hide her away, rig the system…it's your Hell, right? Do whatever the hell you want with it!" He paused, breathing heavily. "We'll owe you. We'll owe you big time."

Crowley looked unhappy. "She's not even under my purview, Squirrel," he finally admitted.

"What the hell does that mean?" Dean snapped.

"It means she's off the grid," Crowley said. "I don't know where she is. I've been looking, per the request of your obnoxious angel friends who paid me handsomely in currency I doubt would suit your fancy, but the lackey that Beelzebub has overseeing her has gone rogue and is particularly discretionary with whom he shares his location—"

"Wait, _what_?" Sam interjected. "Who's Beelzebub's bitch?"

Crowley looked tired of giving free answers to all of the Winchesters' questions, but he also had no way to escape the devil's trap, and he wouldn't admit it, but he also felt a certain degree of guilt for being unable to help them, so he grudgingly answered. "His name is Sonneillon," Crowley said after a moment. "Oftentimes he goes by Sonny. He's a member of the First Hierarchy under Beelzebub and…."

"And what," Sam prodded.

"He's Hell's High Torturer," Crowley told them with a sigh. "He's had the position since you pressure-cooked Alastair a few years ago."

At the thought of his daughter being hurt by Alastair's rogue successor, Dean tried not to crawl back into the shell of despair that he'd been living in for a week. "Are you saying that she's currently being torn apart by the best Hell has to offer?" he asked, trying not to let his voice sound as broken as he felt.

Crowley knew better than to answer that. "Look. I'm sympathetic to your cause. I don't want Baby Squirrel's soul to reach the point of damnation that it needs to be in for Beelzebub to complete his ritual. I have eyes and ears open, and I am looking for her. But even if I find her, which is doubtful, it is a long, uphill battle."

"We'll fight every damn second of it," Dean said. "Crowley, I'm telling you, if you find her…I will owe you. And you know a favor from me is not something I give lightly."

"I know," Crowley said, looking at him with level eyes. "For once, we're on the same team, mate."

"If you find her…if you're able to communicate with her…. Tell her…," Dean started, and then he stopped. He had no idea what he would say to his daughter if he could speak to her right now. _I'm sorry. I screwed up. I miss you. I'll fix this. I love you._

Crowley just blinked, and then he looked at Sam. "Are you going to release me, or are we going to stay here and chat about your bloody feelings instead of getting what needs to be done done?"

Wordlessly, Sam used his foot to break the devil's trap, and without any preamble, Crowley disappeared.

* * *

The next few weeks were a dark, helpless, quiet black hole of researching and hoping and waiting.

Sam and Dean had scoured the bunker top to bottom, summoned countless demons in the hopes of one of them being one of Beelzebub's cronies, slept an average of three or four hours per night, done nothing but eat, sleep, and breathe saving Sophie. It was the only thing on both of their minds. Even as days stretched into weeks stretched into close to a month, they didn't waver. They called in favors, discussed every scenario they could think of, did everything in their power to get closer and closer to an answer.

But so far, nothing had come up.

What they were hoping for was good news from Cas, who had been in Heaven trying to sway the angels to help their case. Dean knew how critical it would be to have Heaven on their side for once, even if it was just a fraction of the angels. Saving someone from Hell was no easy feat, but with angels on their side, it was closer to possible than impossible.

And then there was the matter of this Sonneillon character. After a bit of research, Dean felt like he had a pretty good understanding of the demon, and now that he did, the thought of his daughter in the hands of that creature sent icy rage through his veins. Sonneillon was cruel and hateful, and completely subservient to Beelzebub, and Dean had to work hard to not grab a hold of a bottle of whiskey every time he thought about Sonneillon tearing Sophie apart.

But he didn't. As much as he could, he kept himself together. For her. And while at night his dreams were plagued with memories of her lifeless body in his arms and he'd wake up with a yell on his tongue, his days were scarily silent as he worked tirelessly to find some way to save her.

He would never stop. He would never stop until she was alive again.

_Take a sad song,_

_ And make it better._

This couldn't possibly be the end of the line.

* * *

After nearly a month, Sam and Dean had exhausted a lot of their resources.

So the next order of business was to finally get a hold of Cas.

The angel had seen them once before going up to Heaven to deal with the angels, when Sam and Dean had finally gathered their wits enough to bury Sophie. Cas had attended the burial, which they'd done on a small plot of land beside the cemetery where Caroline Gardner had been buried in North Carolina. If Dean had had his way, he would've buried her by her mother, but they couldn't do it because of the lack of space. Then again, if he had had his way, he wouldn't be burying her at all.

It had been a quiet event. No words, no stories shared or memories relived. They were still in a state of numbness and shock, and even though they had lowered her body into the grave, it didn't really feel like it. They stood in silence by the upturned dirt for a long time, unable to say anything, unable to verbalize their grief. Even when they were driving back to Kansas, in the longest stretch of silence between them since as far back as anyone could remember, none of it felt real.

They hadn't just buried Sophie in a grave close to her mother. They hadn't just hosted the world's crappiest, worst-attended funeral for the world's most wonderful, most loved girl. It wasn't real. None of it was real.

Cas had disappeared after that. He clearly was distraught over Sophie, and he needed to funnel that pain into arguing with all of Heaven.

But it'd now been nearly a month since Beelzebub had killed Sophie. The time that she'd been in Hell was already far, far longer than acceptable. And Sam and Dean needed Cas' help.

And so, after a particularly expletive-laced prayer sent by Dean, Cas finally reemerged.

At that particular moment, Dean was deep into a book that talked about connecting with souls in Hell, trying to find something, anything that might help, and Sam was on his laptop, trying to get an idea of where Beelzebub might be based on weird demonic patterns across the country. They were both silent, rigid, single-minded. There had been no lightness or laughter or jokes made in weeks.

So when Cas popped in and immediately tripped over the piles of books scattered across the floor, landing awkwardly and uncomfortably on his back, Dean didn't even consider laughing. He just looked up and narrowed his eyes. "Where have you been, Cas?"

Cas got up and brushed himself off. "Doing what you've been doing," he snapped. "Trying to save your daughter from an eternity in Hell."

"Yeah? How's that going for you?" Dean asked bitingly.

"I understand that you're heartbroken, Dean," Cas said in a tired voice. "But there's no reason to act so hostile towards me. I am not Beelzebub. I want her back, too. Not just because she's your daughter. Because…because she is good, and selfless, and innocent despite the terrible things she's seen. Because she introduced me to movies, and asked me how I was, and talked to me without treating me like a strange winged aberration, and trusted in me, and had one of the purest, brightest souls. And I want her back, too, so don't treat me like the enemy."

Dean looked up at Cas, and then released a breath and shook his head. "I'm sorry," he finally said.

"Don't be," Cas said shortly. "I'm already over it. Besides, I have news."

At that, Sam and Dean both looked at Cas sharply. "What?" Sam asked.

"Heaven has been…in court, you could say, over the past couple of weeks," Cas said. "The angels have been deciding on a plan of action, seeing as the longer Sophie's soul stays down in Hell, the more likely the chance that Beelzebub opens Lucifer's Cage and unleashes another apocalypse." Cas sighed. "They've decided they would be open to an extraction, like they did for you when you were in Hell, Dean. The only problem—"

"—is that no one knows where she is," Sam finished for him, shaking his head. "This Sonny bastard has her hidden even from Crowley."

"Correct," Cas said, looking a little helpless. "Unless Crowley can figure out where in Hell Sonneillon is keeping Sophie, Heaven won't risk battalions of angels to save her."

Dean shook his head. "Well we can't wait for Crowley. It's been a week since the last time we were able to get in touch with him and he still hasn't found anything. Honestly, I'm surprised he's still even looking. We need to find a way to figure out where she is by ourselves."

Cas heaved a big breath. "That's easier said than done. Hell is complicated, and there are an infinite amount of places where Sonneillon could be hiding with her."

There was a rustling of wings, and then a gruff voice echoed in the room. "I'll go find her."

Sam, Dean, and Cas all looked up in surprise to see the angel that had been notably missing from their bunker over the course of the past month standing before them.

And Remy looked terrible.

His hair was all over the place, and his clothes were messed up and wrinkled. His eyes were glazed over and bloodshot and the darkest they had ever been, and judging by the smell that was emanating from him, he had been drinking.

A lot.

"Eremiel," Cas said reproachfully. "Where have you been?"

"On the hunt for the strongest moonshine in these fifty United States of America," Remy replied truthfully, a humorless grin stretched across his face. "There's a man in Kentucky that makes it out of his basement, and let me tell you, it's a strong contender if you're ever interested—"

"Are you trying to joke?" Cas asked, clearly angry. "I cannot tell if you are joking, but even if you are, how _dare_ you? Your charge is _dead_, Eremiel. It's been almost a _month_."

"Not just dead," Remy said, running one hand through his out of control hair and using his other hand to grab a flask from his jacket pocket, downing the rest of whatever was in it in about five seconds. "She's in Hell," he said matter-of-factly, his voice dead. "And her soul is being torn apart and mangled and violated in the worst ways imaginable and _I can feel every goddamn bit of it_." He tossed the flask onto the ground carelessly. "Guardian angels typically sever their soul-connections with their charges once the charge passes away. But Sophie…." Remy's face contorted for the briefest moment in agony, and the he regained control of his features. "I couldn't do it. Even though I can feel everything…. I couldn't…I couldn't let go of her." He shook his head, clearly trying to somehow sort out the pain and the hurt and the drunkenness. "But that's beside the point. If you need someone to find Sophie in Hell, get me in there, and I'll be able to find her."

"How?" Sam asked.

"We still have our connection," Remy said. "Believe me, if you put me in Hell, I will be able to figure out where she is. Or I'll die trying."

Dean just looked at the angel, in his drunken and sloppy state. "Why didn't you sever the connection?" he asked sharply. "Your job is done. She's gone and you're free to move on to another human who isn't so prone to danger."

Remy glared at him, and for the first time, Dean got an idea that even though Remy put up a solid front of indifference and blasé, devil-may-care bravado, he could be a dangerous being when it came to the ones he cared for. "If you think I saved Sophie all those times just to walk away when she gets dragged to Hell, then you're an idiot, Dean Winchester."

"Then why have you been getting hammered and not helping us?" he challenged.

"If I remember correctly, you spent the first week drunk off your ass, too," Remy told him angrily. "And before now…I couldn't do anything that you weren't already doing. So I kept an ear open and tried a little self-medication in the meantime, because still being connected to her while she's in Hell…. It's not freaking easy, okay? But now there's something I can do, and I'll do it. Whatever the cost."

Dean was surprised. He had known that he and Sam were willing to do anything to get Sophie back, and he had known Cas was on board as well. But he hadn't quite understood the bond between Sophie and Remy until now. He hadn't realized how deeply the angel cared about his daughter.

If not for the fact that Sophie was dead and there were much bigger problems at hand, he would have been a bit concerned about how close they'd gotten. As it was, he was just glad there was someone else on the playing field willing to lose their life to get her soul back.

"Alright," Dean finally said. He looked over at Cas. "Can we sneak him into Hell?"

Cas looked at Remy thoughtfully. "Maybe," he said. "But you'd be alone, Eremiel. No backup, no help, no easy way to communicate—"

"I'll do it," Remy said.

"Are you sure?" Cas asked. "There's a chance that—"

"Castiel, are you deaf?" Remy snapped. "I said I'll do it."

Sam ducked into the kitchen and then walked out with a bottle of water, slinging it at Remy, who caught it deftly. "Sober up first," he said. "Or whatever angels need to do to get over drinking liquor stores."

Remy snorted. "Alright, Mom."

"Hey, you're not going to go save my niece when you smell like the last ten showers you've taken were in tequila and not water," Sam retorted.

"That would be an utter waste of tequila," Remy remarked, taking a quick sip of water.

Dean had been staring at Remy for a long time, but after he said that, Dean spoke up. "You're not in love with her, are you?"

Remy's eyes darkened. "Why does everyone seem to think now is the time to ask me this?" he asked, annoyed.

"I know it seems dumb, especially since right now she's…." He cleared his throat. "But I want to know."

"Look," Remy snapped. "I care about her enough to throw myself headfirst into Hell to try and get her back. If that for some reason concerns you, then maybe your priorities are a little messed up right now."

Dean looked at him, wanting to prod more but then realizing that Remy was right. This was such a stupid thing to be worrying about now. But it was Dean's way of holding on to some bit of her life, his way of still trying to protect her even when she was so far gone from his protection. And it was stupid. But he couldn't help it.

He cleared his throat again. "How's your friend? The little Mary-Kate and Ashley-looking angel?"

"Ariel," Remy said sharply. "Her name's Ariel. And she's not doing all that well actually, now that she has no wings. It's hard for an angel who's never known anything else to get used to being stranded in a place as dark and hopeless as earth."

"I'm sorry," Dean said, knowing his words weren't enough. "If there's anything that we can do to help…."

"There's not," he snapped. "But she'll live."

Dean nodded. "Still. After this…once we get Soph back…we could try..."

Remy just nodded jerkily, clearly unhappy talking about Ariel. Dean knew that Remy had to feel a certain degree of guilt about it. After all, he had witnessed his closest companion from Heaven get her wings cruelly torn from her body, the epitome of degradation and brutality that could be shown towards an angel, especially one as loved and adored as Ariel apparently was.

But Remy just shot Cas a look. "When can you get me to Hell?"

Cas shook his head. "I don't know. I think I have some favors owed to me that I can call on, though. Give me some time."

And then Cas disappeared without another word.

* * *

This left Sam, Dean, and Remy standing in a room together, all in terrible moods. "Got anymore liquor?" Remy asked after a moment.

Dean nodded. "Yeah, it's in the—"

"No!" Sam snapped. "No more alcohol is getting consumed under this freaking roof! You can take shots of whatever the hell you want once Sophie is back here, alive and well, got it?"

Dean and Remy just glanced at each other, and then back at Sam. "Got it."

"Good," Sam said. "Now it wouldn't hurt anyone to search around the bunker and try to find some more lore on—"

But then there came a hard knock on the door, and everyone fell silent.

"You expecting someone?" Dean asked gruffly to his brother, who shook his head. Dean immediately made his way to the nearest piece of furniture with a gun hiding in the drawer.

But Remy was already making his way towards the staircase. Despite both Dean and Sam's protests, he strode up the steps and flung the door open, ready to launch himself murderously at whoever might be there.

Instead, all Dean heard was Remy say was, "What the hell are you doing here?"

And then a familiar voice shot back at him, "What the hell are _you _doing here?"

Sam and Dean exchanged dark glances. "Son of a—"

"_Where is she_?"

The question was asked angrily, desperately, and Sam and Dean knew who the voice belonged to. They heard Remy try to say something general to keep it neutral, but the voice cut him off. "She hasn't answered any of my calls or texts, and she's gone a few days without talking to me before, but never this long. _Never_. So tell me _where the hell is she_?" There was a pause. "Did you…are you _seeing _her now? Is that what this is all about? Did you swoop in with your wings and your halo and your heavenly B.S. and whatever—"

At that point, Dean and Sam had made their way to the top of the staircase, where they could see Jack Williams standing in the doorway to the bunker, looking frustrated. Dean looked him over closely. He was wearing sweatpants and a grey T-shirt, an outfit very uncharacteristic of him, and it seemed he'd accidentally put on two different socks. And he was staring between the three of them in anger and aggravation. "Where's Sophie?" he asked, blue eyes sharp. "I've left her about a million voicemails, and if she's seeing her freaking guardian angel, fine, but I just want to know!"

Sam didn't seem to know what to say to him, and Remy was clearly trying to push past his general dislike of Jack to keep from saying something he might regret.

Dean took a deep breath. "Just go home, kid," he said tiredly.

"Where is she?" he asked again.

"Jack," Dean said, this time much more sharply. "I told you to go home. So beat it."

"No," Jack snapped, refusing to capitulate. "I'm not leaving until I know what the hell is going on."

Dean was starting to get irritated. "I'm telling you to go home, Jack."

"And I'm telling you no," he pushed back.

They stared at each other for a while. Jack was still standing outside, and Dean was technically still in the bunker, standing at the open door, Remy and Sam now behind him.

And he couldn't lie to the kid. He just couldn't.

_Remember to let her into your heart…._

He felt the veiled pain begin to unveil itself again as he look directly at Jack, trying not to let his face fall, but knowing he probably was failing at that. "She's dead, Jack," he said in a hollow voice.

Jack just stood there, unchanging. "No," he said plainly, blinking a few times emotionlessly. "No, you three plus that other angel that wears the trench coats are like some sort of Saving Sophie Dream Team. No way something got past all four of you and managed to kill her."

"Well, we failed," Dean said, feeling the guilt begin to throb inside of him like an infected wound. "And she's dead."

Dean watched as the disbelief turned into cold, painful understanding. "No," he said again. "No, she can't be…."

"She is," Dean said, his voice short and rough, knowing that if he showed any empathy, any more emotion at all, then he wouldn't be able to rein it back in. "She's not here, and there's nothing that you can do about it. So just do yourself a favor, Jack, and forget about us, forget about her, and _go home._"

And then he shut the door in Jack's face.

* * *

"Dean, you know he's just going to come back," Sam pointed out as they walked back down the stairs.

"Maybe, maybe not," Dean said gruffly. "Hopefully by the time he decides to try again, we've got her back."

"So you're just going to avoid him?" Sam pushed.

Dean halted and turned to glare at his brother. "Yeah, Sam. That's exactly what I'm going to do. If you want, you can go hold lover-boy's hand and let him cry gently on your shoulder while I go and do whatever the hell that needs to be done to get Sophie back."

Sam frowned. "I'm not saying we need to be his grief counselors. Just…maybe you shouldn't have shut the door in his face. He loved her, too."

Dean glared at him and pointed back towards the door that he had just slammed. "That's high school love, Sam. That's ask-you-to-homecoming-and-try-to-get-in-your-pants love. It doesn't count."

Sam narrowed his eyes, giving Dean a reprimanding look. "Well, whether or not you think it counts, he's still a kid who's going to be in pain now. And you just told him his girlfriend was dead and then sent him away like—"

"I don't care, Sam!" Dean exploded at him, furious. Sam closed his mouth, watching his brother carefully. "I don't care how he feels, I don't care how you feel about how he feels, I don't care about anything except getting her back!" He paused for a moment, breathing heavily, and then he tried to lower his voice a little bit as he collected himself. "So no, I don't feel bad about sending him away. We can figure it out after she's home. Until then, I don't care about anything else."

Then he brushed past Sam and made his way into the kitchen, where Sam could hear a bunch of clattering and mumbling and low cursing as Dean tried to throw a quick sandwich together for himself.

Sam just stood there, not sure what to do. He heard footsteps behind him, and then Remy stood next to him. "He's in a great deal of pain," Remy said matter-of-factly, as if that might excuse Dean's horrible behavior.

"Yeah, well, so am I," Sam said halfheartedly. "So are you." He then gave Remy a close look. "How're you even functioning if…if you feel what Sophie is…." He couldn't bring himself to finish the sentence, but it was pretty obvious what he was asking. _How are you functioning if you feel what Sophie is being subjected to by the High Torturer of Hell?_

Remy looked at him with a sad look. "It's funny, kind of, but God created humans to withstand all kinds of pain and suffering. Because they were his chosen ones, and chosen people usually have much adversity to overcome. But angels…angels he did _not _create with that capacity, because we were never meant to feel pain like this." He let out a long breath. "To answer your question, physical pain…it doesn't do to us what it does to humans. What she's feeling…I don't feel the sensory pain, just the pain to her soul, the deep hurt and trauma that goes beyond the physical sensation of pain. Fear, helplessness, resignation…." He took a deep breath, unwilling to say anymore, knowing that even though Sam deserved the truth, it still had to be hard for him to hear.

Sam cleared his throat. "If we save her…she's not coming back the same, is she?"

Remy rubbed his face with his hands and shook his head. They were both quiet for a long time, and then Remy released a long breath. "I think I'm sober again," he sighed. "Not that being drunk helps at all. But at least then it made sense that I couldn't control all of the feelings in my mind."

Sam cracked a humorless grin. "I'm still amazed that you angels can even get drunk."

Remy shrugged. "Angels can't get drunk. Humans can. And our vessels are human. Ipso facto, angels can get drunk. It just takes a hell of a lot."

Sam nodded. "Well, either way, no one's touching so much as a wine cooler until we save Sophie's soul," he said stiffly.

Remy looked at him. "I take it Dean did not…initially react well."

Sam shook his head, listening to Dean still bumbling around in the kitchen. "The only time he was sober that first week was when he drove to and from North Carolina. And honestly…it was scarier than when he was drunk. He didn't say anything, didn't listen to music, didn't even make a sound when a deer ran out in front of the car on the highway." Sam sat down at the table, looking tired. "But at the motel, in his sleep…he kept tossing and turning, and he'd shout or mumble sometimes. He's just… broken."

"He's broken," Remy agreed. "But he was broken before Sophie. She fixed him."

Sam didn't realize the truth of the angel's words until he heard them with his own ears. "Yeah," he said in a muted tone. _Me too._

At that moment, Dean came back into the room, a mostly eaten sandwich in his hand as he swallowed whatever was in his mouth roughly. "Alright," he said sternly. "Remy, we need to discuss what your game plan is for Hell."

Remy shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not familiar with the landscape of Hell. But I'm confident that once I'm there, my connection to Sophie will help lead me to her. Even if I don't have the power to help her, I could at least relay to Heaven where she is."

"No," Dean said, shaking his head and popping the last bit of the sandwich into his mouth. He walked over to a bookshelf by the table and started frantically looking through titles before swallowing. "No, the fate of my kid is _not _going to hinge on you feeling like you _might_ potentially be able to sense her once you blindly rocket yourself into Hell. No, you're going in there with an idea, so we need to find some sort of roadmap."

"You really think there's going to be a roadmap of Hell sitting on these shelves?" Sam questioned skeptically.

"We won't know if we don't look. There's a lot of weird crap in here," Dean said sharply. "We can try Crowley, too, but the bastard only answers when he feels like it."

"Yeah, well, he's the King of Hell," Sam pointed out.

Dean just shook his head, still scouring the bookshelf. "Doesn't matter," he said. "We can't just send you into Hell with nothing to go off of, Remy, so you better get studying."

There was a fluttering of wings, and then a voice that said, "I don't think that's necessary."

Everyone stopped doing what they were doing and looked over to see Cas, standing in the middle of the room. He looked deeply troubled and worried, and Dean felt a hammering in his chest. "What happened, Cas?" he asked in trepidation.

Cas seemed to have difficulty figuring out where to begin, so he walked over to the table in the main room and set his hand down on it, as if touching something solid might anchor his mind. "I just spoke to one of the…acquaintances that owes me a favor. She's a witch who makes deals with lots of big time demons, and I guess one of those demons works with Beelzebub. It took me a while, but I tracked down the demon, and…."

"And what?" Sam prodded.

"He said they change Sophie's location, all the time," Cas said somberly. "It's impossible to know where she could be at any given time, because not only is Sonneillon using all of the powers at his disposal to veil her location in Hell, but they're also physically changing her location quite often."

"What are you trying to say?" Dean asked angrily.

"There's no way to pinpoint her location," Cas said slowly. "And if there's no way to pinpoint her location—"

"Then Heaven won't risk the manpower to save her," Remy finished, and his voice was tinged with fury. "Cas, you know as well as I do, if we sent enough angels in there, it wouldn't _matter _that we didn't know where she was, we could fight our way through and find her once we got in there—"

"At the cost of who knows how many angel lives," Cas cut in. "I've tried to advocate for her, Eremiel, but the angels don't think the benefits outweigh the costs."

"Not even when the cost of not saving her soul is letting Lucifer free and starting the apocalypse 2.0?" Sam asked incredulously.

Cas looked over at him apologetically. "They, um, have their way around that," he said. "If Lucifer was to get released…they would simply try to obliterate you, Sam, so that Lucifer would have no true vessel. And then they would try to find him in his weaker form and attempt to force him back into the Cage before Beelzebub could find a way to kill him."

"That's crap, Cas!" Dean exploded. "They really think they're going to save lives by waiting until Beelzebub busts Satan out? Really?"

"That," Cas said slowly, "and you're not exactly Heaven's favorite person, Dean. Some…relish the idea of your daughter suffering."

Dean felt anger rush over him and was overcome by the desire to hit something, but Remy's next words pulled him back down. "Send me into Hell anyway," he said sharply. "I'll do it all. I'll find her. I'll get her out. I'll do whatever it takes."

Cas shook his head. "There's no point. Your chances are practically nonexistent, and all you'd do is get yourself killed. We need to rethink—"

Without warning, without anything to suggest something was about to happen, Remy emitted an agonized yell and clutched at his chest as he sank to his knees. His eyes were squeezed shut, and his whole body was glowing, and he was yelling even louder as his body grew brighter. As he collapsed onto his back on the ground, Sam, Dean, and Cas snapped out of their states of shock and surrounded him.

"Remy!" Dean barked, placing a hand on Remy's shoulder. "What's happening, man, what's going on?"

The angel didn't respond. There was a bright flash of light and a long, loud cry tore itself from Remy's lips, and then the light faded and he fell back against the floor, eyes more green than they'd ever been, wide with disbelief and pain.

"Remy, what the hell?" Sam asked as Remy took a few deep breaths. "What just happened?"

Remy shook his head, eyes still wide, and he rubbed his face with his hands as he sat up. His hand slowly went back to his chest, and then a look of pure fear and agony crossed his face. "It's gone," he said hoarsely.

"What?" Dean asked sharply. "What's gone?"

"The connection," Remy breathed, making his way shakily to his feet with Sam's assistance before turning his head to look at Cas, as if the angel might have answers. "The bond between me and Sophie's soul…it's been broken. I can't…," he blinked, a lost expression on his face, "I can't feel her anymore. She's just…gone."

Right at that moment, Cas' phone rang. All eyes were on the blue-eyed angel as he pulled the phone out of his pocket and glanced at the caller, frowning darkly. "It's the demon, the one that knows about Beelzebub and Sonneillon," he told them before answering the call and putting the phone to his ear. "Hello?"

The Winchesters and Remy watched as Cas listened intently to who was calling him, and after about a minute his face fell and he turned around to continue speaking in a low voice on the phone. "What's that supposed to mean?" he snapped angrily. There was another pause. "Are you saying that means that Beelzebub already—well, find out!"

The phone snapped shut, and Cas turned around, a grave, dark, and perhaps most obviously, heartbroken look on his face.

"What is it?" Sam asked him, dreading his answer.

Cas didn't seem to know how to reply. He just stood there, almost as if he were in shock, with a defeated look on his face.

"Cas!" Dean barked. "C'mon, man, talk to us! What was that about?"

Somehow, Cas looked like he had just aged ten years in ten seconds. "That was the demon I've been in contact with," he told them with a slight waver in his voice. "He called to tell me that he went back to Hell in an effort to find a demon directly associated with Sophie or Sonneillon, because I ordered him to do so upon pain of death, and he was easily persuaded. But he said when he was down there, and spoke with one of his superiors…." Cas shook his head, reluctant to say the words. "As of today, Sophie's soul is no longer there."

Dean stared at him, his heart pounding blood harshly through his body. "What does that mean?" he asked, but he knew the answer.

"He said he thinks…he thinks Beelzebub harvested her soul already," Cas said in a lost tone. "She must've…must've reached the point of damnation necessary for the ritual. He's either about to open the Cage…or he already has."

"No," Remy said quickly and firmly, shaking his head, his eyes wide and nearly frantic. "That can't be…that can't be what this means. She can't be…I would know, I would know if she was gone, I would know…."

Cas shook his head. "No, you wouldn't, Eremiel," he said despondently. "Your bond is broken. Someone either severed her connection to your soul…or her soul no longer exists."

Dean just stared at him, but behind his stone expression his vision was clouding over as wave after wave of crushing pain hit him. "So that's it?" he stated plainly. "She's just…gone."

"It's not confirmed," Cas said quickly, "and this demon could very well be lying or just be an idiot, who knows—"

But Dean was already leaving the room, leaving the bunker, going God knew where. He heard Sam's halfhearted, grief-stricken protests calling out to him, telling him not to go, that leaving wouldn't do anything, but the words faded into the sound of blood rushing through his body.

He couldn't even identify the emotions gripping him; some strange numbed, dull agony and fury, shrouded in disbelief and helplessness. After everything, after his countless sleepless nights and work, after the shots in the dark and the hoping beyond hope…he still lost everything.

Sophie was dead.

And now, her soul was gone. Most likely obliterated.

She was gone.

Forever.

_ Don't be gone._

Forever.

Gone.

* * *

Over a thousand miles away, in a tiny unmarked grave just outside of an insignificant, small cemetery in North Carolina, Sophie Winchester's heart began to beat.

_Then you can start,_

_ To make it better…._

**This was a long one guys, sorry, I just wanted to squeeze this all into one chapter!**

**Guys, your reviews and support over the past couple of chapters….just wow. So much love from you guys is pretty overwhelming, and I wish I could reply to each of you who read or reviewed and thank you individually, but that's just not even feasible because of how big of a response I got. I know these chapters have been a dark, dark roller coaster, and it's been sad and heartbreaking, but the story is far from over, clearly. Thank you for reading, friends. Until next time. ~Lacey**


	79. Chapter 79: Disconnected

_Chapter 79: Disconnected_

When Sophie opened her eyes, her first sensation was darkness.

She didn't move for a few moments as she tried to piece together what had happened, but her memory was clouded. She had no idea how she had gotten here. All she remembered was infinite agony and then…no more.

Everything around her was dark, and once she became aware of the fact that she had command over her body, she lifted her hands slowly and pushed out into the darkness. She came into contact with something hard above her head, and as she began to feel around, she gulped.

She was in a coffin.

She pushed against the wood above her, and it budged surprisingly easily. It didn't feel like the coffin was all that well-made, and judging by how little force she had to apply, the grave must have been relatively shallow and the earth above not even compact yet.

Her mind was spinning. How long had she been dead? How long had she been in Hell? She couldn't even remember, it had felt like so long.  
And most importantly, how was she alive?

The anxiety and fear began to slowly make its way into her mind, and before she let it overtake her, she pushed hard on the wood with all of the force she could muster. Without warning, it pushed up, and she gasped as dirt avalanched down onto her and into the coffin, burying her alive.

Burying her alive. After just coming back from Hell. If Sophie wasn't in the middle of trying not to die again, she might have laughed at the irony.

In her panic, Sophie began to push her way through the dirt, holding her breath and trying not to breathe in more earth than she already had. She pushed, clawed, kicked, and dragged her way upwards through the dirt, thanking whoever in the universe that was there to be thanked that the dirt above her wasn't rock solid.

After what felt like hours of clawing through the earth, but was barely two minutes in reality, her lungs burning from the lack of oxygen, she felt her hand burst through the surface of the ground, and not long after, her head was above ground and she gasped for air.

After filling her lungs with oxygen, she pulled herself the rest of the way out of the earth and collapsed next to the hole in the ground, resting on her back as she breathed in deeply.

And for the first time in too, too long, she saw the sky.

* * *

Dean was drunk again.

And this time, it wasn't sipping on glasses of whiskey late at night in the bunker drunk. It was slamming down shots of whatever the hell they had at the nearest bar drunk. Dean didn't even know how much he had, couldn't even fathom how hard his liver had to be working, didn't care that there was no way he'd be able to drive home, that there was no way he'd be able to contact Sam after he'd gotten so pissed at the constant incoming phone calls that he'd actually thrown his phone out the window of the Impala.

He didn't care if he passed out on the floor, or if he burnt the whole bar down, or if he wound up dead in a ditch.

He didn't care. He just didn't care.

Because Sophie was gone. Worse than dead. Obliterated.

And he didn't care about anything anymore. Caring just hurt too damn much.

The bartender was a newbie, and she couldn't have been more than nineteen. She had dark hair tied up at the base of her neck and sharp hazel eyes that looked at Dean with more and more concern each time he gestured for another drink. Finally, after she'd almost lost count of the number of drinks she'd given him, she finally said, "Um, sir? Got anyone to drive you home?"

Dean glared at her. "Kid, just bring me more whiskey," he practically growled, but it came out as a low, barely intelligible slur.

The bartender crossed her arms, looking at him with a conflicted look. "Yeah, I don't think so," she said. She grabbed the phone at the back of the bar and, to Dean's annoyance, called a cab.

"Kid, I don't need a ride, I need a drink," Dean snapped unsteadily.

She hung up the phone and leaned over across the table, handing him a beer glass full of water. "You must be in some world of hurt, mister, to be drinking like that," she said. "But it'll hurt just the same in the morning, and you'll have a bitching hangover to go along with it. So drink the water, face the music, and take the cab. You have much more and you're gonna kick the bucket."

Dean continued to glare at her as he pushed the water away from him. "You're like, what, twelve? You probably think you should take anyone's keys after one beer. Just hand me another drink."

The girl shook her head. "You know, not to get all sappy-stranger-at-a-bar on you, but my daddy was a drunk. Never got mean or anything, but he'd do what you're doing, go to bars and get smashed and hope that he'd forget about all the crap in his life. Maybe your life is worse, maybe it isn't. Either way, all that ever got my daddy was an early funeral and a whole lotta lost opportunities. So maybe," she continued, pushing the glass of water back towards him, "maybe you ought to think about your opportunities."

Dean just stared at the water and shook his head. He slapped too many bills on the counter and then rose unsteadily to his feet. "Maybe you ought to go to college or something instead of staying in this crappy town serving crappy alcohol and crappier advice to strangers, kid."

"My name's not _kid_," she grumbled as he turned away to walk out. "It's Sophia."

Dean froze for a moment with his back turned to the girl, and the image of _his_ Sophie flashed across his mind, giving him a hard time, pushing him to be better than the man he let himself be. She'd be furious that he was doing this. She'd yell at him and lecture him. She'd tell him to buck up and get his head in the game.

He shook his head, hoping that the alcohol might burn away some of the agony, and then he stumbled out the door.

When he had pulled into the little hole in the wall bar, it had still been daylight, but now it was pitch black. The only thing that kept him from getting in the Impala despite his inebriated state was the slight voice of reason that told him if he drove, he might hurt someone else. And while Dean didn't care what the hell happened to him, he still cared just enough to not be the reason somebody died.

He knew all too well how it felt to be the reason somebody died.

So without any second thoughts, he left the Impala in the parking lot of the bar and just started walking.

Or, more accurately, he started stumbling. The alcohol was starting to settle in, and Dean felt the lightness and fuzziness begin to cloud his mind. It took a hell of a lot to get Dean Winchester drunk, but he had easily gone above and beyond the required amount, and he was feeling it. He was tripping over his own feet on the sidewalk, practically zigzagging his way down the road, not even knowing the direction in which he was going. He couldn't remember whether the bar was north, south, east, or west of him, and he had no clue where he was in relation to the bunker.

It didn't matter, though. He had nowhere to go anymore.

He wasn't sure how long he stumbled through the dark, but when a pair of headlights turned the corner on the road and lit up his entire body, nearly blinding him, he knew he'd been out long enough that Sam had finally come out to look for him. And sure enough, the car pulled up right in front on him, screeching to a halt seconds before the driver's door opened and Sam stepped out.

Dean watched in silence as his brother walked up to him. He cleared his throat. "I broke your no drinking rule," he slurred, swaying a little bit.

Sam just looked at his older brother. He didn't look angry or disappointed. He just looked sad. "I don't care," he said.

Dean just stood there despondently, staring at his brother with as much focus as his alcohol-addled brain would allow. "She's not coming back, Sammy," he finally said, and for the first time, there was no guard up, no trying to hide the truth of what he was feeling behind short sentences or gruff words. Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe it was the fact that his bartender had been named Sophia, or maybe it was just finally a loss that Dean couldn't recover from, but either way, he couldn't keep the pure sorrow out of his voice. "She's not coming back."

Sam took a deep breath, an inch from falling apart himself but unwilling to do so while his brother was already standing in front of him completely destroyed. "C'mon, Dean," he said in a heavy voice. "Let's go."

Dean didn't even have enough strength in him to argue. Wearily, he followed Sam back to the car, some crappy Toyota that he must've hotwired. Without a word, he slid into the passenger seat, and Sam walked around the car and got behind the wheel. In a thick, impossibly heartsick silence, the two Winchesters drove back to the bunker.

And for the first time in a long time, they had no idea what to do next.

* * *

When Sophie finally had her bearings enough to get up off of the ground, she took a good hard look at her surroundings.

She was by the edge of a forest, and beyond a small hill she could see a cemetery resting a few dozen yards away from her. As she stared harder, she realized that she had been here before. This was where her mother was buried.

She felt a pang in her chest. If she was here, and she had just climbed out of her own grave, then her dad must havebrought her body halfway across the country just so that she could be buried near her mom.

And then the pang got worse.

Dean.

Sam.

Slowly, she stood up on her feet, shaking slightly as she got used to using her legs again. She looked down and saw in disgust and shock that she was still wearing the clothes she had died in, a grey crew neck and jeans, both of which were caked in old dried blood. As she stared at the deep red tear in her shirt where _synkomidí̱ _had torn through her body, she could feel the pain like it was happening at that moment. She looked away, feeling like if she stared anymore she might get sick.

In an effort to divert her mind from the horrible, horrible memories clouding her memory, she began to walk away from her grave, towards the cemetery. It appeared to be mid morning, the sun a little above the horizon, casting soft gold rays across the gravestones. Sophie made her way through the cemetery like a ghost, quietly and purposefully.

She got to where she wanted to go, and she stood across from her mother's grave stiffly. The last time she'd been there, she'd been pissed at her dad for signing away his soul to Beelzebub, and Remy had been there to comfort her.

Now she was alone, and it was surprisingly cold for a summer morning, and she received no comfort from being near her mother this time. Because now she realized that this grave, this place where her mom's body was buried…that wasn't her mother. Caroline Gardner was in Heaven, where she belonged, safe and sound and peaceful. She was in eternal bliss. She was lucky.

Sophie now knew what it meant to be dead. She knew what it meant to be a soul, to be detached from your body, to be ushered away from earth before you were ready.

And then, without warning, Sophie was accosted by memories, the ones she'd been trying to push back since she'd first opened her eyes in the dark.

_Darkness, screaming, wailing, blood. Skin being flayed from her body, bones being hideously broken, fire in her veins in place of blood. Pain beyond anything she even knew existed. Shrieking, her own shrieking so sharp and shrill that on earth it would have shattered glass. And laughter, merciless laughter ringing in her ears…._

She turned away from her mother's grave sharply. There was no solace here. Just a headstone and some grass above a soulless body.

She walked out of the cemetery and then stopped at the sidewalk. How on earth was she supposed to get home? She had no money, no clean clothes, no phone, and no car. She didn't know how to hotwire one either, since she'd told Dean she thought that stealing cars was just mean. Now she wished she'd done it differently and let him teach her.

She wished she'd done a lot of things differently.

Sophie decided the only thing she could do now was walk. Luckily, she was relatively familiar with the streets of Asheville, and she vaguely remembered how to get downtown from where she was.

She felt like she was walking through a dream, like she couldn't possibly be here on earth, not after where she'd just been. But somehow, she managed to put one foot in front of the other and force herself to go forward.

As she walked, she made a mental list of things she needed to do, partially out of necessity and partially to try and drive away the memories that were creeping at the back of her mind, threatening to overwhelm her. She needed to find a way home. She needed a change of clothes. She needed a phone. She needed something to eat. She needed a cup of coffee.

As she was just about to cross a street, she noticed something on the side of the road, lying on top of the sewage grate, twitching in the light morning wind. When she saw it, she could have danced. As it was, she just looked on in shock, because there were two wrinkled hundred dollar bills lying on the grate, as if they'd been left just for her.

Sophie just stared at them, and then she looked around. Certainly somebody had to be missing two hundred dollars? They'd have to come back for it at some point, right?

But Sophie couldn't help but think that this might be her only good stroke of luck that she might ever receive as a Winchester. And she needed money. Direly.

So, only feeling slightly guilty, Sophie reached down and pocketed the money, thinking that there had to have been some sort of divine intervention there that had put her by the sewage grate at that moment.

Armed with a means to fund herself, Sophie's list began to become more intricate in her head. The first thing she did was walk into the nearest thrift shop she could find and buy the cheapest outfit she could manage to scavenge, which turned out to be a pair of faded jeans, a gray zip-up hoodie, and some ratty old combat boots she didn't think would be too uncomfortable to walk in, since she thought there might be a chance she'd have to do some more hiking to get where she needed to go.

After she bought the clothes, she made a beeline to the thrift store's bathroom and locked the door shut behind her. She dropped her clothes on the ground and made her way to the mirror, where she looked at herself for the first time in a long time, and what she saw made her cringe.

Her face was covered in dirt and dried blood so dark that it just looked like mud, her hair was tangled and so dirty she couldn't even tell what color it was, her lips were chapped, and her skin was pale underneath all of the dirt and grime.

But her eyes were wide. Wide and dark.

_Pain, pain in places she didn't even know could be in pain. Agony that reached the deepest, innermost regions of her soul, anguish that pushed past her physical barriers and mutilated her mind and heart. Screams, endless screams that accompanied unceasing laughter as he drove blades through her skin and broke her apart piece by piece—_

She jumped at the sound of the soap bottle crashing to the ground, which she'd knocked off the bathroom counter as she'd grabbed onto the edge for support when the flashbacks hit her in waves. She took a deep, shaky breath and looked away from the mirror, leaning down and grabbing the soap and putting it back where it belonged.

She had to get this under control. If she couldn't keep herself together now, she'd never make it back home.

She tore her gaze away from her reflection and began to slowly peel her disgusting clothes off of her body with hands that were still shaking slightly. It was quite a long process, since pretty much everything was stuck to her with dirt and blood, but eventually she got it all off.

Once she had stripped down, she used the water from the sink, the soap dispenser, and an countless number of paper towels to wash her body, scrubbing away the dirt and grime and blood. It was surprisingly effective, and after trying to wash her hair as best as she could in the sink and combing through it with her fingers, she emerged a great deal cleaner than she'd been before.

As she tied her hair into a braid and began to pull on the clothes she'd purchased at the store, she couldn't help but think that even though she was a hell of a lot cleaner than she'd been before, she'd never felt dirtier in her entire life.

Without a second thought, she tossed her gross, bloodied clothes into the trash, pocketed her remaining cash, and made her way out of the bathroom and out of the store.

The first thing that she did after leaving the store was try to locate a payphone. And after about thirty minutes of wandering, she finally found one.

Her hands trembled she deposited some of the coins she'd gotten as change from the thrift store into the machine, and she dialed the number that she knew by heart. For what felt like years, all she had wanted was to be home, to be with her family, to be safe and at peace and not in pain. As the machine began to buzz with activity, she realized that all she wanted, the only thing in this world that she needed the most, was just to hear one person's voice.

If she could just hear her dad's voice, then maybe she could pull herself together, maybe the memories would go away, maybe she'd feel safe for once.

"_We're sorry, but the number you're trying to reach has been disconnected."_

Sophie stared at the phone in her hand. She hung up, deposited more money, and dialed again, praying that she'd just dialed the wrong number.

"_We're sorry, but the number you're trying to reach has been disconnected."_

Sophie hung up, her hand shaking. She felt a deep sense of helplessness creep through her veins. She knew that Dean and Sam changed their phones rather frequently, for secrecy's sake, but she really hadn't counted on them doing that while she was dead.

She decided to try her own number, hoping beyond hope that maybe, just maybe—

"_We're sorry, but the number you're trying to reach has been disconnected."_

She hung the phone up again, slamming it down onto the receiver, staring at the payphone numbly. She was now kicking herself for never memorizing any other numbers, relying instead on the numbers saved in her phone. She couldn't call Sam, or Jack, and Jamie, or even Remy.

Remy.

Why didn't she think of that before?

She closed her eyes. _Remy, if you can hear me…I'm alive. I'm alive, and I'm in North Carolina, and I want to come home._

She waited. She waited for anything, even a little tremor in her heart that let her know that Remy was in tune with her, that he knew she was there. But she felt nothing. For the first time in what felt like forever, she couldn't feel Remy.

Panic started to rise in her heart. _Cas, _she tried, and she could feel her body begin to tremble, even though the day was warming up and she was wearing jeans and a hoodie. _Cas, can you hear me? I'm alive, I'm in North Carolina, and I want to come home._

She waited again.

Nothing.

_Remy, Cas, please. I'm alive. I'm in North Carolina. I want to come home._

Silence.

_Why cant you hear me?_

Again, nothing.

_"_I want to come home!_"_

They were the first words she'd said out loud since coming back to life. She hadn't even meant to say them. Her mouth had opened in desperation and the words had fallen out, unbidden.

But there was no reply. Nothing to suggest that she'd let them know that she was alive.

She wanted to collapse right there. She wanted to fall over onto the streets and break down. She was barely holding on to her sanity as her memories of Hell chased her everywhere, biting at her heels and threatening to drag her into utter hopelessness. The fact that she was alone and stranded in this city so far from home…that was cripplingly terrifying. She'd never felt so desperate for home in her life.

But she knew if she allowed herself to fall apart, she'd never get anywhere. So with a few shaky breaths to calm herself down, she turned away from the payphone and walked in the other direction.

Luckily, her time in Hell hadn't robbed her of her pre-Hell memories, and with only a little difficulty, she managed to find her way downtown and shyly ask a few people where she could find the bus station. It took her a few hours, and her legs were beginning to get sore from walking and making wrong turns and standing at crosswalks and walking some more, but eventually she made it to the station located in one of the sketchiest districts of Asheville.

She made her way through a bunch of homeless people, noting how she didn't look much better off than any of them, and found her way to a ticket window so dirty she could barely see the teller on the other side, a short, squat, beady-eyed old man with a shirt that looked like it had been worn three weeks in a row without getting washed. "Where're you headed?" he asked her through the window in a bored voice.

"Um, Apex, North Carolina?" she asked hesitantly, her voice coarse and dry from death and disuse.

The man gave her a mildly surprised look at the destination she asked for, probably because Apex was known to be a wealthy area and clearly, Sophie didn't fit that mold, but he didn't say anything. He typed something into his computer and then looked back up at her. "Yep, we've got a bus leaving for Apex in two hours."

Sophie nodded. "Alright. I want a ticket to Apex then."

"Got any ID, kid?" the guy asked.

Sophie just stared at the guy. "Um… I mean, Apex is only a few hours away from here, it's not like I'm leaving the country or anything, and I have money for the ticket—"

"No ID, no ticket," the man said sharply.

Her face fell. "Sir, please, I've got to get there, it's important."

The guy leered at her, and she felt a chill run through her spine as he looked her up and down slowly. "Look, sweetie, if you wanna get on that bus without an ID, you're gonna have to come around here to my desk and show me how badly you want it."

Sophie took a step back from the ticket counter, throwing the man a disgusted look. "In your dreams, pervert," she snapped.

"Your loss, sweetie," the guy said with a mildly disappointed look. "No ID, no favor, no ticket."

Sophie made a revolted sound and then stomped away from the ticket counter, past a middle-aged woman sitting on a bench knitting and a homeless couple napping against each other on the ground. In a haze of frustration, she made her way back out onto the street. She was furious, but she hadn't run out of hope just yet; she would just have to find a way to sneak onto the bus when it came, because there was no way some sicko was going to deter her from going home.

She had a plan now, too. She had come up with it while she was walking through the streets, caught between the memories of her life before the Winchester and her time in Hell. She was going to go to Apex. And she was going to go to the one person in a five hundred mile radius that she knew had a few spare cars—her crappy stepdad, Steve. She was going to take one of his cars—with or without his knowledge, she didn't care—and then drive back home.

The plan wasn't perfect. There were more holes in it than she cared to admit. But it was all she could think of on a very limited budget and with absolutely no identification, and she just wanted to go home, whatever it took.

* * *

She was still pissed at the creepy ticket guy, so she decided to go grab something to eat while she waited for her opportunity to sneak onto the bus.

She bought herself a burger from a local joint as she cooled down and waited. She couldn't help but think of her dad as she paid for it with a five she'd gotten as change at the thrift store. Dean would probably be proud that her first meal since coming back from the dead was a burger.

But she didn't think much farther than that. Thinking about her dad and about Sam hurt. She just wanted to be home. She had this tense, shaking knot in her stomach, and it made her feel like if she didn't get back to Sam and Dean soon, she would explode with the memories and the fear and the confusion and the loneliness that she was feeling. She felt so exposed, being alone and far away from her family with no way to contact them.

She just wanted to feel safe again.

The burger was a bit of a letdown. Sophie had been hungry, seeing as no food had been in her stomach for quite some time, but it just tasted…normal. Sophie was just too anxious to think anything tasted good. She was too on edge. So after only taking two bites out of it, she had to throw it away.

After a while, with about twenty minutes to spare until the bus was supposed to arrive, Sophie returned to the bus station and was annoyed to see that the gross ticket guy was still there. Huffing, she went and sat down on one of the seats to wait for the bus, and was surprised when the woman who she saw knitting earlier came down and sat by her.

"Hey, kid," the woman said gruffly, sounding like she'd been a pack a day smoker for decades. "I got somethin' for you."

Sophie was about to shake her head and refuse whatever it was, really not in the mood to get involved in some sort of drug deal, when the woman stretched out her hand and offered her a sliver of paper. Confused, Sophie hesitantly took it, and when she looked at it her eyes widened. It was a bus ticket to Apex, North Carolina, departing in twenty minutes.

Sophie looked up at the woman. "Miss, you didn't have to do that, I could have—"

"Listen, kid, clearly you got places to be, and it ain't over there arguing with Pedophile Pete," she said, fishing around in her pocket before she pulled out a box of cigarettes, which didn't surprise Sophie in the slightest. "Ain't a big deal to me."

Sophie immediately pulled cash out of her pocket. "How much was it? I can pay you back, I mean, as long as it's less than a hundred and fifty—"

"Don't worry about it," the woman said, lighting the cigarette and sticking it between her lips. "It's just money."

Sophie was about to protest when a horn blasted, and the woman gave her a wink. "That's my bus. I'm headed to Vegas. Gonna test my luck in the slots." Sophie just stared at her, speechless. "Good luck, kid. Hope you get where you wanna go."

And then she got up from the bus and promptly left Sophie behind her.

Sophie pocketed the ticket, marveling at her second bout of excellent luck since rising from the dead. First the two hundred dollars lying on the side of the road, and now this.

If she hadn't just been to Hell, she might've said it was the hand of God. As it was, she was just counting her blessings.

Sure enough, twenty minutes later the bus to Apex pulled up, and Sophie was one of eight people boarding. She found a seat all alone near the back, curled up near the window, and stared out of it as the bus began to roll out of the station.

She was on her way.

* * *

If the bartender Sophia had been right about one thing, it was that Dean woke up with what he was pretty sure was the worst hangover of his life.

He opened his eyes, and before he could even gauge where he was, he rolled over and puked straight over the side of the bed.

As he continued to vomit and his head cleared ever so slightly, he was able to make out the trashcan right by the bed that'd he'd been throwing up into. He wiped his mouth and tried to think back to the night before. Cas' news…the bar…stumbling through the dark…headlights…Sophie….

He groaned, and then he heard a voice that felt a lot louder than it probably was say, "You're finally awake. Good."

Dean slowly sat up and blinked once to see Sam standing in the doorway. His brother looked pretty rough—the bags under his bloodshot eyes were pronounced, his hair was up on end, and he had the same clothes on as he had been wearing when he found Dean. The older Winchester got the feeling Sam had done his own fair share of drinking the night before, just not to the extent that Dean had.

Sam turned on the lights, and Dean was able to recognize that he was in his own room. Sam must have dragged him in here at some point the night before and left the trashcan by the bed, just in case. Dean squinted at the sudden brightness, his head pounding. "Get up," Sam said, his voice surprisingly stern. "We have a case."

Dean wiped his mouth off on his sleeve and then glared at his brother. "You've gotta be freaking joking."

"Not even close," Sam said. "Clean up your mess, shower, and get dressed. We're rolling out of here in an hour."

And then Sam left and slammed the door shut, causing Dean to wince.

After a moment of realizing that he wasn't even mad at Sam, just numb inside out, Dean got up and did exactly what Sam told him to do. He stripped off his clothes and jumped into the shower, barely even feeling the hot water pounding on his skin. He didn't stay in for very long, instead quickly getting out, drying off, and throwing on some clothes. He walked back into his room, hastily grabbed a bottle of pain killers out of his drawer, did the best he did to clean up the mess he'd made, and then he exited the room and made his way into the main room.

Sam was standing there, showered and ready, as well as prepared with the duffle bag that they usually brought hunting with them. In his hands were two thermoses, which Dean assumed were filled with coffee.

"There's a potential vengeful spirit at a home in Imperial, Nebraska," Sam said right out of the gate, ignoring the fact that Dean had roughly yanked one of the mugs out of his hands and was using it to down a small handful of painkillers. "Guy got pushed down the stairs by his fiancée and nearly died, except the fiancée is claiming she didn't do it and that it was her dead twin sister. The woman's in custody and the guy is in a coma at the nearest hospital."

Dean just stared at him. "We're going to go hunt a _vengeful spirit _right now?" he asked scornfully, the first fully developed sentence he'd said all day. "We could sic any day-old hunter on that thing and he'd be able to get the job done."

"I don't care," Sam said, and Dean suddenly remembered Sam finding him the night before.

_I broke your no drinking rule._

_ I don't care._

"What the hell are you trying to do, Sammy?" Dean asked, his voice tired and broken.

"Dean," Sam said, his voice almost imploring his brother to listen. "Soph's gone. Forever. That…that hurts more than either of us can explain. But if she's really gone…that means the world is about to start getting really screwed, just like it did a few years ago. We can't let that happen."

Dean shook his head. "Sam, I don't give a damn anymore. Let the world burn. See if I care."

"You mean that now," Sam said, nodding. "I know you do, because I feel like that, too. But in a few weeks, when we hear the news reports about people dying in freak accidents, about kids getting slaughtered and towns being destroyed…then we'll give a damn. Because Sophie would've been pissed at us if we let Beelzebub win."

Dean was silent for a long time.

Sam gave Dean a pointed look. "I know you don't care if the world burns. But I also know that somewhere in you…you care about _something_, because you know that worthless bastard is still walking around, free and powerful, after he took away the one person in this world you couldn't bear to see die. And we have to stop him, Dean. We need to take him down. For Sophie."

Dean stared at Sam, knowing that his brother was right. He would never rest easy again, but killing Beelzebub... that would be a start.

Still, he glared at the taller Winchester. "How the hell is a preschool-level salt and burn supposed to help us end Beelzebub?"

For the first time that morning, Sam dropped the obvious façade of strength. "Dean…I don't know about you, but if I stay in this bunker for one more minute, where it feels like she's just going to walk through the door with a cup of coffee in one hand and some ridiculously long book in the other…I'm going to lose it. I just need to do…_anything_."

If nothing else, Dean understood that. Every time he walked down a hall, he expected to hear Sophie calling to him to ask about something she'd found in one of the bunker's many books, or humming along to one of those dumb Taylor Swift songs, or making coffee in the kitchen.

She was everywhere and nowhere and it was crushing him. And apparently, it was crushing Sam, too.

Dean took another long drink from the coffee thermos, and then he swallowed hard and looked at Sam resolutely. "How far away is Imperial?"

"About three and a half hours away," Sam replied.

Dean nodded. "Fine. What the hell are we waiting for?"

**1\. Holy _buckets, _friends. Over 1000 reviews. Incredible. Amazing. Unbelievable. All these words and so, so more apply to you. Thank you.**

**2\. Guys. Big news. I'm facing my fears and attempting to create a tumblr. I will keep you posted on its creation, because tumblr is overwhelming and scary and confusing, but hopefully it'll be a fun way to interact with ya'll and keep the story alive even when I'm not posting chapters to it. If anyone wants to share their tumblr expertise with me, I'd be happy to accept. Surprise, my Tumblr is just LaceyoftheTypewriter. You can check it out now if you want, I guess, but there's not much to see as of yet.**

**3\. I wanted this update to contain the Big Reunion, but alas, it started to get too long for that to be plausible. So look out for it next Saturday. It will be emotional. Feelings will be felt. Get ready.**

**4\. These last few chapters along with the next few chapters were challenging/amazing to write, and I'm so glad you guys are liking them. So stayed tune, friends. Stay tuned. ~ Lacey :)**

**PS- Happy Halloween! Have fun and stay safe.**


	80. Chapter 80: A Little Rain Must Fall

**Quick A/N: I so deeply appreciate all of your thoughts and prayers this week, guys! Everyone in my family is okay; my little brother was in a car accident, and for a second there it looked like it could be serious, but God is good and now all my brother has is a broken arm, so all is well! But seriously, it meant a lot that you guys sent your well-wishes. *group hugs all of you through the Internet***

_Chapter 80: A Little Rain Must Fall_

When Sophie arrived in Apex, she felt like she had just left one nightmare only to be dropped right into another.

She wished she could have gone straight to Kansas, but she knew the bus tickets and all of the transfers would have been impossibly expensive. As it was, she was only mildly confident that she'd have enough money for gas to get all the way to Lebanon from Apex. But she'd cross that bridge when she came to it.

But even if it was necessary to her getting home, she hated Apex. It was where her mom had married Steve, and where she'd later died. It was where Sophie had gone to a school she hated and lived with a bitter stepfather who resented her existence. There was no love lost between her and this city.

But that was fine. All she needed to do was get to Steve's house, find a way to get into his garage, snag one of his five cars, and get the hell out of there.

She got off the bus within a twenty minute walk of Steve's house, and as she began walking through the familiar streets of her old town she began to realize that she was starting to feel pretty tired. And that scared her. She didn't want to have to stop before she got home for something as dumb as sleep, especially since she was pretty sure that the moment she tried to sleep she would be accosted by the most vivid and terrifying nightmares that were more reality and less fantasy.

In fact, she was certain about that, because those nightmares were already happening now, in her waking moments. Hard as she might have tried, she couldn't help but let Hell creep into her thoughts, and she could still feel the drawn out agony, just as sharply as when she felt it actually happening.

_Not now_, Sophie told herself. _Don't let it crush you right now_.

The walk to Steve's house went by surprisingly fast as she tried to fight back her demons. When she turned onto the street where his house was, she glanced up at the sky and saw that the sun was hanging low in the sky. It had to be around six or seven in the evening, which meant that Steve was probably still at his office, finishing up last minute projects.

Sophie picked up the pace. She crossed her fingers and hoped that he hadn't changed the garage lock code or any of the hiding places where he stored spare keys, otherwise she was going to have to resort to more drastic measures to get a car.

When she saw Steve's house, her stomach clenched uncomfortably. The last time she was here, he'd hit her in the face for dropping a pitcher of orange juice and Sam and Dean had saved her. It felt like so long ago. She'd been a wholly other person then, more insecure and afraid and guarded.

Although if she was honest with herself, since coming back from Hell, she'd felt more like that scared, timid little girl that she'd left behind nearly two years before than the strong, capable person she'd become as a Winchester.

With a new sense of urgency, she hurried towards the garage of Steve's home. Quickly, she punched in the code from when she'd lived there, and to her utmost surprise, it worked.

She'd almost forgotten that people lived lives that didn't require constantly changing locks and switching passwords, just to make sure they were able to stay alive.

She smirked as the door lifted to reveal the same five cars that had always been parked in his massive garage. Most of them were sports cars, all ridiculously expensive and rarely used. But all the way at the end was the car that hadn't been driven in God knew how long, because it had been her mom's.

It was a standard black Chevy Suburban, and Sophie remembered looking at it every morning before she left for school and hating it deeply, because if her mom had been driving it that night instead of one of Steve's tiny, sporty cars, she might have survived the car crash that had killed her.

Now, Sophie was just glad that Steve had been too lazy to get rid of it.

The keys to all the cars hung on a set of hooks by the door that led into the house, and Sophie quietly made her way over and snagged the keys to the Suburban. As she turned to walk back to the car, she couldn't believe her luck. It was almost _too _easy, but she wasn't going to complain—

But then she heard the door behind her open, and she jumped as she heard a familiar, disbelieving voice say, "Sophie?"

She turned slowly and saw the tall outline of Steve standing in the doorway, and when she focused in on his face, she could see the incredulous expression he was wearing.

She glanced over at the cars and only then realized that his usual car was parked in the garage. She was an idiot; how did she not notice that? She was off her game.

"Hi," she said weakly.

He stared at her for a few moments longer, and then his eyebrows knit themselves together. "What the hell are you doing here? I should call the police, you're breaking and entering."

She lifted the keys in her hands. "I'm taking Mom's car," she replied calmly. "That's it. And you could go ahead and call, but then you'd have to explain how you managed to lose the teenager you were legally obligated to look after."

Steve looked genuinely surprised that she was threatening him, and then he seemed like he wanted to yell at her, but he thought better of it. "Why should I let you take anything of mine?" he snapped. "Especially since the last time you I saw you, that psycho you left with messed up my face so badly I needed reconstructive surgery to fix it!"

"Because I need the car, Steve," she said plainly. "I need it, and if you let me take it, I will never bother you again. And that's a promise."

Steve looked at her closely, considering what she said. "And what if I don't let you take it?" he challenged.

"Then I start where my dad left off, and you're going to need more reconstructive surgery once I'm done taking out years of pent-up frustration on you," she replied coolly and honestly. It scared her, how she was telling the truth and not even feeling bad about it. But after facing torture in Hell, she could think of far worse things that Steve deserved for being such an asshole to her.

His face fell a little bit at her words, and he glanced over at the Suburban. "Take it. It's garbage anyway," he said stiffly. "And don't come back."

"No problem," Sophie said in a low voice.

"And I'm sorry," Steve quickly added, to Sophie's utter surprise. She looked up at him, taken aback. He looked massively uncomfortable, like he wished he hadn't said anything at all, but something was making him speak anyway. "I shouldn't have hit you that day. I lost it. I won't say I deserve what your crazy redneck father did to me afterwards…but I regret it."

Sophie nodded slowly, hardly believing that she was hearing an apology from one of the most heartless human beings she knew. "Well…consider me never bothering you again as forgiveness."

Steve nodded, and then with a few more seconds of staring at her as if she were a ticking time bomb, he receded back into his house, and she heard the door shut and the lock turn sharply.

Sophie didn't stop for a second to see if Steve would change his mind. As quickly as she could, she hurried over to the Suburban. She unlocked it, hopped into the front seat, turned the key in the ignition, and within sixty seconds, she was pulling away from the house for what she hoped was the last time in her life.

Ten minutes later, she was turning onto the highway that would take her towards Kansas, and for the first time since being raised from the dead, Sophie felt the slightest tinge of hope.

In twenty hours, she would be home.

* * *

The case in Imperial, Nebraska went by monotonously.

It was textbook, really. The police had blamed Alice Humphrey for pushing her fiancé Ronald Simpson down the stairs, when in actuality it had been the ghost of her twin sister Alana, who had engaged in a little affair with Ronald before her sudden death by tripping and falling down the stairs three years prior. Apparently, Alana still wasn't over the fact that Ronald chose Alice over her, and was trying to end their relationship even in death.

The issue wasn't taking out Alana. Sam and Dean achieved that with relative ease within twenty-four hours of setting foot in Imperial. The issue was getting the police to release Alice.

Which was what they were arguing about the next day.

"Look, getting in the middle of this is just going to draw attention to us," Dean told Sam as he laid back on his bed in the motel, staring up at the ceiling despondently. The case had sucked all of the very little energy that he had out of him, and the thought of putting up more of an effort killed him. "And besides, we're fake lawyers sometimes, not real ones. We can't get her out of lockup, especially when all the evidence points directly to her."

"Well, I was pre-law at Stanford," Sam said. "I can handle the nitty gritty. You just need to go in there and charm the pants off of the lead detective."

Dean threw Sam a look. "You know usually, I wouldn't mind that, because that detective is smokin' hot. But I'm not really in the mood, Sammy."

"You're not _actually _trying to get laid," Sam responded. "Just…butter her up a bit. We're talking about a woman's entire life being on the line for something she didn't even do. You could flirt in your sleep, Dean, it's not asking a lot."

Dean wanted to keep arguing, but there was no use. However he tried to spin it, Sam would just bring up the obvious—if they didn't give it their all, an innocent woman could be stuck in jail for the rest of her life.

He heaved a big breath, sitting up in his bed and looking around for his sports coat. "Fine," he grumbled. "We get the chick out of jail, and then we go home and start finding a way to kill Beelzebub in incredibly painful ways, got it?"

Sam nodded. "Fine by me."

Dean hauled himself out of bed and glanced over at Sam. "Suit up, Erin Brockovich, we've gotta figure this out sooner rather than later."

"Why do I have to be Erin Brockovich," Sam grumbled as he stood up and made his way over to the closet, where his FBI suit hung. "There are about a thousand famous attorneys, and you pick Julia Roberts."

"Because she wasn't a real attorney, dumbass, and your hair is roughly the same length," Dean snapped. "Now stop bitching and put on your power suit, I want to be out of here by tonight."

Sam shot Dean a look and yanked his suit out of the closet, and within ten minutes they were out the door.

* * *

When they got to the police station, though, something bad had clearly happened, judging by the congregation of police officers behind the front desk, all talking in low voices.

Dean walked up to the front desk and flashed his fake badge at the secretary before making his way towards the group of LEOs. "Hey, folks," he said briskly. "What's up?"

The lead detective, a tall, attractive blonde that went by her last name, Berry, turned to Dean. "Detective McCartney, glad you're here," she acknowledged him with a nod. "You missed quite a lot."

Dean looked at the distressed group of officers and his eyes narrowed. "What's going on?"

"Alice Humphrey is dead," Berry said with a long exhale of breath. "She managed to hang herself in her holding cell. Got a hold of some wire, I don't know how, we're looking into it."

Dean glanced at Sam, who looked surprised. "Have you ruled out foul play?"

Berry nodded, looking a little overwhelmed. "We haven't filled out the paperwork yet and we're waiting for a few test results to come in, but yeah, it's looking like a bona fide suicide. Guess she just couldn't handle what she did, seeing as who knows whether or not Ronald will ever come out of his coma." Berry sighed. "What a tragedy. The Humphreys and the Simpsons are known as good folk around here. Seems like all the crap happens to the good ones."

_You have no idea_, Dean wanted to say. Instead, he glanced over at Sam and then back to the detective. "Mind if we take a look at the scene?" he asked. When Berry looked hesitant, Dean mechanically flashed her his most winning smile, feeling dead on the inside but noticing how Berry immediately looked flustered. "C'mon, Monica," Dean implored with his robotic charm, using her first name. "We don't want to get in your way, just make sure we've got all the details right for our report before we head out."

Dean knew Berry had given in before he even finished his sentence. "Alright, no harm in that, I suppose," she allowed. "This way."

She led them to the holding cell where Alice Humphrey had been locked away, and Dean's eyes went to the young woman's body swinging from a light fixture in the ceiling. He had just spoken to the poor woman the day before, and she'd been scared out of her mind, and confused, and grieving, and desperate. Dean should have realized how bad of shape she was in, should have given her some sort of indication that he was on her side and not the police's, but he'd been distracted. And now she was dead.

Life was rough.

Dean kept Berry busy with questions while Sam underhandedly checked for EMF. Over the blonde detective's shoulder, Dean saw Sam shake his head. No sign of ghosts. Which was what Dean had expected, since they'd gotten rid of Alana Humphrey's ghost the night before.

They walked out of the holding cell and Berry stepped away to speak with the police chief. Dean looked at Sam with a raised eyebrow. "Guess we don't need your fake legal prowess, Erin," he told Sam.

Sam didn't even bother countering Dean's jab. "It looks like a legitimate suicide," he said sadly. "Even the markings around her neck and the asphyxiation…all points to her doing it herself."

"Yeah," Dean nodded. "It does. Nothing we can do about it."

Sam shook his head. "Listen, I'm sorry man. This was a letdown of a case to be working after…. Well, I don't know, just wish we could've left this one with a victory."

Dean looked over at Berry, at the squad of LEOs all working to deal with the very human, non-monster related problem at hand. And he shook his head. "It wouldn't have mattered," he said. "Even if we'd saved her, we'd still feel like we screwed up and lost. We'll feel like that for a while no matter how many people we manage to save."

Sam couldn't disagree. There were a few long moments of silence, and then Sam took a steadying breath. "Well, neither of us slept last night since we stayed up to stake out Alana Humphrey's ghost," he finally said. "Let's try to catch a couple hours back at the motel and then we'll head back."

Dean just nodded. He was too numb to argue. "Fine."

And so, with another loss added to an already failing record, the two Winchesters left the station and went back to the motel, knowing that behind them in the police station swung the body of yet another person they had failed to save.

* * *

Sophie had driven through the night and was watching the sun rise somewhere in Illinois.

She was exhausted, but she still had about eight or nine hours left in her drive. She had attempted to pull over at a rest area once around three in the morning to take a quick nap, but the moment her eyes had closed and she began to drift off to sleep, she was back in Hell.

She woke up five minutes later screaming, and after she slowly was able to convince herself that she was alive and okay, she got out of the car, grabbed a cup of coffee from one of the dispensing machines in the rest area, and continued driving.

As she gulped down the coffee, which she didn't even take the time to savor, she tried to think about anything else besides Hell. Because it was starting to become impossible to push everything back in her mind, especially on the road where she had few distractions and a whole lot of time for reflection.

Eventually, she found that the best thing to do was listen to the radio at an incredibly high volume. She flipped through radio stations constantly—pop, rap, rock, country, jazz. She didn't care what was on; she wasn't really listening at all. She just wanted something loud and blaring to cloud her mind, to numb her somehow.

The road stretched out in front of her, endless. She tried praying to Cas and Remy multiple times as she drove, but there was total radio silence. Not a single thing to indicate to Sophie that they might have heard her.

Sophie was worried about not being able to communicate with them, but the much more pressing issue was the fact that the needle on her display was pointing dangerously close to the _Empty _side of the gauge, signaling that she was almost out of gas. And she didn't have much money left. The Suburban was quite a gas guzzler, and she was working on very limited funds.

If she couldn't make it to the bunker, she had no idea what she'd do.

But for now, all she could do was follow the directions given to her by the outdated little GPS connected to the windshield and hope that she didn't get lost, die from sheer exhaustion, or run completely out of gas before she made it back home.

And so she drove.

And she drove.

And she drove.

She drove as the sun moved its way from just on the horizon, through the air, and towards the center of the sky. She drove through plains and hills and long stretches of land that seemed to extend endlessly into the distance. She stopped a couple times for the purposes of getting gas, going to the bathroom, and trying to splash some water on her face to keep herself alert.

She was so anxious she couldn't eat or drink, and when she tried to nap once more around one in the afternoon, she woke up after a mere ten minutes with such horrible, vivid images ingrained in her mind that it took her twenty minutes to stop her body from shaking like a leaf.

So she went into the rest area, splashed some more water on her face, and got back in the car. She turned up the volume on a radio station that was blaring pop hits from the '90s, and drove on.

* * *

Sophie used the last of her gas money as day melted into night and Missouri melted into Kansas.

When she saw that _Welcome to Kansas_ sign, she could have cried. As it was, she was just worried she'd run out of gas, as she still had a good couple of hours before she hit Lebanon.

But she was so close. She was so close to being home, with her family. So close she could already feel Dean's arms around her, smell that painfully familiar scent of soap, whiskey, leather, and gunpowder, see the light in Sam's eyes that he seemed to have whenever he saw her, hear the sound of coffee brewing in the morning as her two favorite people talked about upcoming hunts in the main room of the bunker.

She was so close.

So. Damn. Close.

But she was all too familiar with the reality that things never quite went as she hoped they would. So when it started pouring down rain as she passed through Lawrence, she almost wasn't surprised.

The torrential downpour slowed down traffic quite a bit, and Sophie wanted to scream at the line of cars in front of her as she made her way down the highway at a slow forty miles per hour. At this rate, it'd take twice as long as it should to get back home, and the closer she got, the more she felt like she was going to fall apart if she never got there.

The rain beat down on the car as she slowly crawled through Kansas, and it didn't let up one bit. In fact, the closer she got to Lebanon, the harder it seemed to rain. As seconds ticked by into minutes which ticked by into hours, she watched as the rain continued to pound down onto the earth, as lightning crackled across an otherwise lightless sky, as the needle on her gas gauge got closer and closer and closer to empty.

Until finally, with just eight miles to go until she arrived at the bunker, the car burned up the last bit of gas, and to Sophie's utter devastation, began to break down on a worn, rarely traveled Smith County road.

Sophie was able to pull the car over to the side of the road, and she glanced at her GPS once more before shutting down the car. She stared out onto the open, empty, dark road ahead of her for a few long moments. Rain was falling in silver sheets, and all she could hear was the raucous thumping of her car being bombarded by such a heavy downpour.

And then she screamed, hitting her fist onto the steering wheel and listening in strange satisfaction as the horn blared loudly.

She was exhausted. She was so tired she honestly didn't even know how she was driving. But she knew she couldn't sleep, at least not until she got home. And at that point, when everything else had failed her, that was the only thing she wanted, her only goal—go home. It was a mantra that played over and over in her mind, on loop.

_I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home._

She debated waiting out the storm, but the fact that she was a mere eight miles away from her goal taunted her. Even though she'd been able to run eight miles no problem before she'd died, she was in no condition to traverse that distance in her current state. Physically, she'd now been awake for nearly forty-eight hours, had eaten only a couple bites of that burger back in Asheville, and still was getting used to the fact that she had her body back. And her mental state... she was shattered.

But she didn't care. She just didn't care.

_I want to go home._

So she pocketed the keys to the car and pulled the grey hood of her sweater over her head. With one deep, steadying breath, she stepped out of the car and into the stormy night.

As she shut the door to the Suburban, she was caught in the downpour. The hood didn't do much to shield her from the rain, but she wore it anyway. Thunder rumbled loudly around her, and even though she felt it shake her bones, she barely heard it.

She shoved her hands into her pockets, and as the rain soaked her through her clothes and chilled her, she grew just a little bit more awake and alert.

_I want to go home_.

And, with eight stormy miles in between where she stood and home, she began to walk.

* * *

Dean wasn't even surprised at how bad it was storming on their way back to the bunker. It would have been ridiculous for anything to have gone his way at this point.

They hadn't left Imperial until around seven or eight. Sam had slept until the early evening, and even though Dean had only managed to nap for about an hour or two, he had let his brother sleep. Granted, Sam's sleep hadn't been all the sound. Dean had watched his brother mumble and twitch in his sleep, calling out in senseless exclamations here or there.

Dean knew all too well the struggle of trying to sleep while his mind was crowded with living nightmares.

The rain had started about twenty minutes after they'd left the motel, and it only got heavier as they got closer to Lebanon. It got to the point where Dean's vision was so obscured by sheets of rain lit up by the occasional flash of lightning that he had to slow down, and it was taking them longer than he wanted to get back to the bunker.

Because the sooner he got back to the bunker, the sooner he could start figuring out the best way to dismantle Beelzebub limb from evil limb.

At that point, that was all that was keeping him going.

"Hey Dean?" Sam started as they got close to Lebanon's city limits.

Dean just grunted in response.

"We should bring Remy into this," he continued. "He's a wreck. And he feels like it's his fault. Even though that's—"

"Not true," Dean finished gruffly for his brother. "This one's all on me, Sammy."

"I was going to say that's not fair for anyone to put all on themselves," Sam snapped. "It's all our faults, Dean. If you don't think we didn't all play some sort of role that got her killed, then you're just being a moron."

"Whatever, Sam," Dean said, not feeling like arguing with him. It didn't matter what Sam said, didn't even matter what the truth was. Sophie's death would always be his fault, no matter what.

Sam just shook his head and looked out the window. He saw an abandoned black Suburban on the side of the road, broken down. As they passed it, he just shook his head. "Either way, the more people we have on our side, the better."

"Fine," Dean said, focusing on the road ahead.

Sam could tell Dean wasn't going to talk at that moment, so he gave up. He'd try another time. He'd have to. Because he wanted Beelzebub dead just as much as Dean, and even if his brother was going to keep shutting him out, he was going to keep trying.

Dean, meanwhile, kept driving, a Metallica song playing low in the background. The rain was pounding hard on the Impala, and Dean was pretty sure that the road he had to take to get to the bunker was going to be flooded.

He was thinking about the best way to avoid sinking the Impala when his headlights fell on a dark, rain-hidden figure walking slowly and unsteadily through the pouring rain in the middle of the road in front of them.

Dean slowed down as they got closer, noticing that the person had their back towards them and a hood thrown over their head, which Dean doubted helped shield them from the rain at all. At this point, Sam had noticed the figure, too, and was looking at Dean with a question in his eyes.

Dean shook his head. "No, Sam, don't do it, we're not a freaking taxi service, don't—"

Sam was already rolling down his window. "Hey!" he yelled out the window, his hair immediately getting soaked from the rain that blew sideways into the car, much to Dean's annoyance. "Hey, was that your broken down car back there?"

The person kept walking. Dean doubt they'd even heard Sam, the rain was falling so hard and the thunder was rolling so loudly. Dean pulled up a little closer and Sam yelled even louder. "Hey! Do you need a lift somewhere? It's not safe out here!"

At that, the person froze, and Dean stopped the Impala about ten or so feet behind them and put the car in park. The person slowly turned into the beam of the headlights, and as the light fell on the face partially obscured by the darkness, the rain, and the hood, both Sam and Dean straightened in their seats as their hearts seemed to stop at the exact same moment in each of their chests.

And as a crack of thunder shook the earth and lightning brightened the sky, they saw the small, soaked form of Sophie Winchester standing in front of the Impala, green eyes wide and surprised as she took in the car behind her.

The first thing Dean felt was pain. Because he wanted it to be her so, so badly, but he knew there was no way. It couldn't be her. It just couldn't.

They'd tried everything. They'd done all that they could do, looked in every nook and cranny, tried to find every loophole. There was just no way that his daughter was standing alive in front of him. And that thought pierced him with agony.

Just as quickly followed rage. He wanted it _dead_. Whatever it was that was using his daughter against him, that was riding her dead body to try and make some sort of point…it was going to pay.

With quickness he didn't even know he was still capable of achieving, he reached into the backseat and pulled out a gun, knocking the safety off and cocking it. But even as he saw red, he felt Sam's hand on his shoulder, and he looked through his rage-filled vision at his brother.

Sam's face mirrored his own: agony, despair, and unchecked fury. But he also had a steely, determined look in his eye. "I'll do it, Dean," he said sharply. "You shouldn't have to."

Without saying another word, Sam grabbed an angel blade from the glove compartment, knowing it would kill any supernatural being that might be taking the form of his niece, and stepped out of the Impala and into the storm.

Dean watched with hard eyes as Sam, immediately drenched by the downpour, walked up slowly to the monster impersonating his daughter. To his slight surprise, it didn't even move as Sam approached it. It stared at him, almost in disbelief, frozen in the headlights.

Sam approached the monster, his heart pounding angry, extraordinarily sad blood through his body with each step he took. He was thrown off by the fact that it wasn't moving in the slightest, just staring at him with wide eyes, red hair glued to its face with rain, silent and motionless and soaked through to the bone.

He had initially intended to just run the blade through its chest and end it quickly. But a wild, desperate, dangerous, inexplicable hope gripped him, and when he got within two steps of it, he quickly reached out, grabbed its cold, compliant, shaking hand, and made a swift cut along the palm.

Nothing happened. No flash of light, no screech of terror, no hissing or flashing black eyes. Those painfully familiar green eyes just winced in a barely perceptible fashion, and then when they made contact with his own hazel eyes, they began to fill with tears.

Rain poured down onto them both as he stared at her in disbelief, and her lower lip quivered. "S-S-Sammy?"

The blade fell out of his hands, clattering on the wet pavement, and then he let go of the hand as if it were on fire. "It can't be you," he said in a strangled voice. He fumbled around in his coat pocket and pulled out the tiny flask of holy water he always kept in it. He splashed some on her, and the water mixed in with the rain, doing nothing more than make her blink. He then pulled a small pocket knife out his pocket, specially made with silver, and placed it against her wrist. Nothing.

Sam stared at her, eyes widening and brightening. "How?" he breathed, bringing his hand up to gently cup her face in pure joy and shock.

Dean, however, was watching this all from the Impala. And seeing his brother staring at that monster, being fooled by it, infuriated him. So before Sam could take Sophie into his arms, Dean burst out of the Impala, gun in his hand, and strode towards the scene in front of him, not even paying attention to the rain already beginning to soak through his clothing.

"Get away from it, Sam!" Dean roared in a dangerous tone, pointing the gun directly at the evil creature that looked so sickeningly like Sophie. "Why the hell would you let it trick you?"

His brother looked up, and upon seeing a nearly deranged Dean stalking towards them with a loaded gun in hand, he stepped in front of Sophie, shielding her from the line of fire. "Dean, stop, I tested her," Sam said, his voice pleading.

Dean ignored his brother, still holding the gun up as he took a couple more steps forward. "What are you?" he shouted menacingly at the monster. "Huh? What the hell are you?"

"Dean—" Sam tried again, but in a rage Dean pushed Sam off to the side and stood in front of the monster face to face.

But it didn't look like a monster.

It just looked like his daughter.

It was her. It couldn't be her, but it was _her_. She looked terrible, and her hair was stuck to her skin, and her clothes were way too big, and she looked a second from collapsing onto the ground, but it was _her_.

He almost lost it when he saw her eyes. They were _her _eyes. Not just the same shape and the same color, but they had that same look to them, a depth and a light and a recognition that were undeniable. Dean's next words were caught in his throat, and they came out in a hoarse cry as rainwater fell down his face. "What are you?" he choked, the image of his daughter killing him inside, because it couldn't be real. It couldn't be.

But the eyes. And the look on her face. It was so agonizingly _her_.

"_What are you_?" he yelled at her desperately, the gun wavering slightly in his hands.

He swallowed sharply as she took a step towards him, like even though he had a gun pointed at her head she couldn't help but absolutely trust him, like she just knew that he could never, ever hurt her.

But when she went to take a second step, Dean saw exhaustion hit her full force as her body swayed and her knees buckled.

His reaction was instinctual. There was no thought behind it, no rationalization or reasoning. His body reacted far before his mind did, like it was just programmed into his system to always, always help her. He saw her begin to fall, and he immediately lunged forward and wrapped his arms around her frail, shaking form, following her down to the ground as she collapsed.

He placed the gun on the ground and then froze as her forehead fell against his left shoulder and she maintained just enough consciousness to keep herself on her knees and grab onto his jacket. Dean was on his knees as well, his arms tight around her where he'd placed them to keep her from crashing to the ground, and he remained completely still for fear of moving and having her lift her head to reveal a pair of black eyes or something worse.

Instead, he felt her whole body shake, and then the most beautiful, heartbreaking sound filled his ears. The voice he hadn't heard in a month. And even though it was partially muted by the sound of the storm, it was still the voice he thought he'd only ever hear again in his dreams. _Her_ voice.

"I had to come home, Dad," she sobbed weakly into his shoulder. "I had to come home."

And he was gone.

The questions and the misgivings vanished from his mind entirely. The arms that had just been making sure she didn't fall to the ground gripped her tightly and crushed her to him, pulling her close to him. One hand gripped her shaking shoulders as the other cupped the back of her head, his fingers clutching the wet strands of hair that had been exposed when she'd crumpled to the ground and her hood had fallen back.

His head fell onto her shoulder as the rain beat down upon his back, and he held her, rocking her slowly back in forth like she was a small child. He lifted his head once to kiss her temple, which caused her to sob even harder. "It's okay, baby girl," he choked out as she shook so violently in his embrace he thought she might just vanish into thin air, atoms spread out in the stormy night. "It's okay. You're home now. You're home."

And then his eyes began to sting, and his head fell back to her shoulder. He felt his shoulders give a small, involuntary quiver as cries tried to force their way out of him, but he couldn't let that happen, not when his daughter was already broken down and leaning on him for support. He sniffed roughly and took a deep, unsteady breath, letting the rain disguise the handful of tears that had managed to escape his eyes.

He lifted his head slightly, letting his eyes look up into the cloudy, dark sky, not knowing where in the universe to direct his immense thankfulness. He looked over and saw Sam, looking on at them with the ghost of a grin, and Dean had a feeling that he wasn't the only one hiding his tears behind the lie of rain.

He felt Sophie shake again with her sobs, and he just held her tighter, unwilling to ever let her go again. "Dad," she whispered weakly, and then her hold on him loosened. He turned his head to look at her as her arms slackened and her body slumped against his, and he saw that her eyes had fluttered closed.

She had fainted.

The rain didn't let up in the slightest as Dean shifted his arms so that he could lift her up off the ground, one hand under her knees and the other under her back, letting her head fall against his chest. He stood up, looking over at Sam as he carried his living, breathing daughter in his arms. Sam took one glance at them, with the most intense brightness in his eyes, and said, "I'll drive."

Dean didn't argue. They walked back to the Impala, all soaked to the bone and feeling lighter than they'd been in what felt like an eternity. Sam slid into the front seat as Dean made his way to the backseat, sitting down slowly and carefully so as to not jostle Sophie. He closed the door and cradled Sophie, not wanting to have her not in contact with him at any moment, as if letting go of her would cause her to slip away again.

He rested his chin on the top of her head, marveling in the slow, steady stream of breaths that moved her chest up and down. Sam kept looking back in the rearview mirror, too, as if making sure she was really there and not just a figment of his imagination.

Dean didn't care that they were all so soaked through with rain that he'd probably have to spend a while fixing the Impala back up afterwards. He didn't care that he now had a million more questions that needed answers. He didn't care that there were going to be a hell of a lot of issues come morning light, because if he knew anything, it was that there were going to be issues.

But at that moment, it didn't matter. None of it mattered.

Sophie was home.

**I love reunions. ~ Lacey :)**


	81. Chapter 81: Welcome To The Club

_Chapter 81: Welcome To The Club_

When Sophie woke up, she immediately realized two things.

First, she was home. She knew it instinctually, without opening her eyes, without even recalling the events of the night before. She didn't know how, but she just knew that she was back where she belonged.

And second, she wanted coffee.

She rolled over and immediately groaned. She could tell that she was disgusting. Her clothes were still damp from the torrential downpour of the night before, and she was sore, likely from her forty-eight hour journey to get home. She breathed in deeply and blinked. It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust, but when they did, she saw that she was in her room at the bunker.

She let out her breath in contentment. Home. She had never had such a deep, desperate attachment to something that was so indefinable, but now she understood the concept.

She heard a slight squeak of a chair, and she turned her head and saw, sitting at the little chair by her desk, the tired and stirring form of her dad.

Dean must have heard her mattress squeak as she turned, and he jolted upright when he saw her slowly rising to sit up. Their eyes met, and as Sophie stared at him in his dazed eyes, like he was in some sort of dream, she remembered everything from the night before.

She remembered walking down the rainy highway, stumbling forward, so tired and wet and downtrodden that she was practically dead on her feet. She remembered turning around and seeing the headlights to the Impala and thinking maybe she'd died again, and this was some strange Heaven. She remembered seeing Sam and the heartbroken look on his face when he first looked at her and thought she was a monster, and she remembered the look of amazement when he realized that it was actually her.

She remembered seeing her dad and thinking he looked pretty awful, and thinking that even though he was yelling at her and demanding that she reveal what monster she was, she wasn't afraid of him. She could never be afraid of him. She remembered walking towards him and then feeling her body shut down and crumple, because she had completed her journey, and she was home, and she had used up all of her energy getting there. And she remembered arms catching her, and she remembered holding onto her father for dear life as she cried in pure relief, and she remembered him holding her back.

And then nothing.

Now, looking at Dean, everything came back together in her head, and she turned so that she was sitting up in bed and facing him. He was watching her with hesitant eyes, as if at any moment she could disappear or morph into an evil monster or drop dead.

Instead, she just grinned. "Hi."

Dean couldn't help but return the grin, even though it was a little disbelieving. "Hi, kiddo," he said. He stood up and walked over to her bed, sitting down next to her and looking at her straight in her eyes. He shook his head after a moment and gave a little chuckle, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and pulling her in for a hug.

Sophie didn't mind. She leaned into Dean's shoulder, grinning slightly as he tucked her head under his chin. "God, Sophie," he said, his voice coarse, like he couldn't even come close to conveying what he wanted to say to her.

She pulled away, glancing up at him tentatively. "I'm so sorry," she blurted out, to Dean's colossal surprise. When he didn't say anything, she continued, her voice cracking from disuse as she spoke. "I shouldn't have left the bunker that day, I should've realized it wasn't you texting me, it was so stupid, _I _was so stupid—"

Dean shut her up by pulling her in for another hug, which surprised her, but she didn't dare complain. She had missed her dad's hugs too much. "You're only stupid if you think I'm actually mad at you," he said softly. "Which would be impossible."

She was quiet for a long time, just resting in her dad's embrace. "I was dead," she said softly. It was the first time she'd said that aloud, the first time she'd acknowledged it. "I was actually _dead_. And now I'm not."

"Welcome to the club," Dean said bitterly.

Sophie gave a small shiver. "Yeah, well it's a sucky club," she mumbled.

Dean let her just lean against him for a while. He rubbed her shoulder and she found peace in the fact that she was finally back somewhere safe and secure. But then he cleared his throat. "Do you…do you want to talk about it?"

Sophie tensed, and she pulled away from him. She glanced downwards, unable to make eye contact with him. "Um," she started lamely. "I don't know…what are you…."

Dean lifted his arm from her shoulders, but he watched her closely. "Soph," he started gently. "You went to Hell."

Sophie was still. She was so still that she couldn't even tell if she was breathing. At the very mentioning of Hell, images began to slowly invade her mind, memories that were vivid enough to feel like the actual thing.

Then she shook her head. "I just want to take a shower," she said in response.

Dean watched her close down on herself. "Okay," he finally said, leaning over and kissing her forehead once. "Whenever you're ready, we'll just be out in the main room."

Sophie nodded, and watched as he slowly stood up and walked towards her door. He turned around and glanced at her again, making sure she was still really there, and then he turned back around and disappeared behind the door.

Sophie moved quickly, not wanting to give herself too much time to start thinking. She walked through her room and to her closet, marveling at how the whole space looked like she'd never left. She guessed that Sam and Dean hadn't come in here to clean out her stuff—they were a pretty obstinate pair, and they probably had tried everything to bust her out of Hell and weren't even close to thinking about getting rid of her stuff.

She walked into her closet and grabbed out her comfiest top, a soft-to-the-touch white T-shirt with the Busboys and Brew logo on the front pocket, which had been a random gift from Jack, since he worked there and thought she might want a shirt with a coffee cup on it. Then she grabbed the article of clothing that felt the homiest and the most familiar, her yellow and pink plaid pajama pants. It wasn't like she planned on leaving the bunker anytime soon, anyway. If she wanted to wear pajamas, then damn it, she'd wear pajamas.

After gathering her clothes, she made her way into her bathroom. Peeling off the clothes she'd purchased from the thrift store in Asheville felt liberating. She threw them in a pile on the ground destined for the garbage, and then she turned on the shower and stepped in. For a while, she just stood under the stream of water and let hot water pound on her back. But then she slowly started to think back to Hell, to fire and pain and agony, and she quickly turned to grab soap and shampoo and started to clean herself.

After nearly an hour of washing and rewashing her body and her hair multiple times and still failing to feel truly clean, she stepped out of the shower and dried off before slipping on her comfy clothes. She towel dried her hair as best as she could, and as she went to put it up in a haphazard ponytail she stared at herself in the mirror.

She looked…better, she guessed. A little more well-rested, and certainly much cleaner. But there was still a terribly haunted quality about her. She hated looking into her own eyes, because they looked so old and sad.

After all, she'd just lived through _years_ in Hell. She felt older. She felt like the age of her mind was incompatible with the age of her body. She felt wrong, somehow.

She pushed the feelings down. She was home. She had her dad and Sam now. They could help her. They could fix her.

She took a deep breath and finished her ponytail as she stepped out of the bathroom. Then she gave her room one last glance and left, into the bunker beyond.

Everything in the bunker looked somewhat similar, minus the fact that it was a complete mess. She detoured through the kitchen first and saw stacks of dirty dishes and half-eaten sandwiches. She gave a small smirk. Of course they'd devolve into gross frat boys without her.

Sitting interspersed between the dishes were books and papers, and with a painful lurch in her stomach as she read the titles of them, Sophie realized that most of them were related to souls in Hell and demon deals.

They'd probably almost killed themselves looking for a way to save her.

She tried not to think too much about it as she managed to find one clean mug, which was unsurprisingly the chipped one she usually preferred to use. She guessed it was the one mug that they hadn't had the heart to use while she was gone. She fired up the Keurig, since the coffee pot looked desolate and gross, and made herself a quick cup of coffee. She brought it to her lips and sipped it cautiously, grinning as the warm liquid hit her tongue.

Now that was one thing that hadn't gotten more complicated with Hell. Coffee was still coffee, and it was still delicious.

Fueled by the steaming mug in her hands, Sophie stepped out into the main room.

Standing by the table, talking closely and quietly to each other, stood Sam and Dean. Sophie watched them as she quietly entered the room, not making her presence known right off the bat so that she could just watch them. She focused in on Sam, watching him say something presumably snarky to Dean judging by Dean's accompanying eye roll, and then Sophie decided she didn't want to stay silent anymore. She set her coffee down on top of one of the bookshelves and cleared her throat.

Immediately, both Winchesters turned to look at her. Sam's eyes went wide and a grin split his face, and she couldn't help but smile back. "Soph," he said, not seeming to know what else to say, but looking so happy to see her that Sophie could've cried all over again.

Without waiting for him to say anything else, she took a few fast steps across the room and jumped into his wide open embrace. Sam's strong arms corded around her as she locked her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist like she was a little kid, and she felt his chest shake as he chuckled lightly.

She held onto him tightly. "I missed you, Sam."

Sam gave her a tight squeeze. "I missed you, too, Sophie. More than you can even imagine." When she held onto him even tighter, he laughed again. "Who knew you were such a little koala?" he teased.

She let go of him, hopping back onto the floor and offering him a sheepish grin. "Sorry," she said. "I just really, really missed you."

"Yeah, you don't get to apologize for that, Soph," Sam said, wrapping his arm around her and crunching her into a side hug. "You can koala me anytime you want as long as you stay alive."

"Be careful what you wish for," Sophie warned. Sam chuckled again as she went back over and grabbed her coffee from the bookshelf where she'd left it.

When she returned, both Sam and Dean had wistful grins on their faces. "What?" she asked defensively.

"Of course you'd come back from the dead and run straight for the coffee," Sam noted. "You literally made a cup of coffee before coming to see me."

Sophie just shrugged, a little abashedly. "Habit," she replied in excuse.

They grinned as she took a quick drink, and then she realized after a moment that they were just staring at her. "Stop it," she complained. "Why are you looking at me all weird like that?"

Dean crossed his arms. "Well, yesterday we thought Beelzebub had sacrificed your soul to set Lucifer free, and today you're sitting in front of us drinking coffee and koala-ing Sam, so that might explain the strange looks."

Sophie looked up at them, surprised. "You thought he'd already sacrificed my soul?"

Sam nodded, watching her closely. "Cas had a contact among the demons close to Beelzebub," he explained slowly, not wanting to push too much onto her at once. "They told him that your soul was no longer in Hell. And right before that happened, Remy had this moment where…he said he lost connection with your soul. The bond was broken."

It was a lot of information to take in at once, so Sophie sat down at the table. "That explains why I couldn't get into contact with Remy when I first got out of my grave," she told them. "Cas didn't answer either."

Sam nodded. "Cas was…upset, after finding out you might have already been sacrificed," he said carefully. "I think he turned off his angel radio and ran off to try and find out if it had actually happened."

Sophie looked up, the coffee mug acting as a snug security blanket in her hands. "I called you, too, Dad," she said in a small voice. "And my old phone. But the lines were disconnected."

She immediately regretted saying it as a shadow of guilt fell over Dean's face. "I threw my phone out of a window," he admitted after a moment of deliberation. "And I couldn't stand listening to your phone buzzing every ten seconds with someone wanting to know where you were, so I just…got rid of it."

"Why didn't you call me?" Sam asked her.

It was Sophie's turn to look ashamed. "I didn't have your number memorized," she said guiltily. "I used to just pull it up on my phone whenever I needed it."

"So how did you get here?" Sam asked her, bewildered. "We buried…you were in North Carolina."

Sophie leaned back in her chair, staring down into her cup of coffee. And then she heaved a big breath. "I guess it's story time," she sighed. She glanced up and saw that Dean had sat in a chair close to her, looking at her carefully. Sam was half-standing, half-sitting on the table, waiting for her to keep talking. "I guess I'll start from when I woke up…."

* * *

And so Sophie went through the process of explaining to Sam and Dean how she had crawled out of her grave and found enough money to get some clothes and get her onto a bus, leaving out details like the creepy ticket guy and the fact that she spent the whole time repressing flashbacks from Hell. When she told them that she took a bus to Apex to snag a car from Steve, Dean interrupted her.

"Are you kidding me?" he exclaimed. "You went back to that asshole? Why didn't you just take a bus back here?"

"I didn't have enough money for the ticket to Kansas," Sophie explained. "But I had enough money to buy gas for a car, barely, and I knew Steve was relatively close by and had a bunch of cars, so…I don't know, I wasn't really thinking all that clearly, I just thought of it and went with it. If I had spent a long time coming up with the best possible plan, I'd probably still be wandering around North Carolina."

"He didn't do anything, did he?" Dean asked.

Sophie was quiet for a moment, thinking about her short run-in with Steve. It had been so strange seeing the man she had hated for so long and realizing she didn't even hate him anymore. She had so much more to be bothered by than a man who was no longer in her life.

"Sophie, did he?" Dean prodded, looking more and more riled up.

She glanced at her dad. "No. He just…apologized." Then she shook her head. "Doesn't matter. What's important is he let me take the Suburban. It had been my mom's car that she used before she and Steve got married. It's just been sitting in his garage for years now. Honestly I'm surprised it got me as far as it did."

"So that _was _your car broken down on the side of the road," Sam said.

She nodded. "Yeah, I finally ran out of gas. It's a miracle I got as far as I did. And I guess I should've just stayed in the car and waited until the rain stopped, but there were only a few miles to get to the bunker, and I just wanted to be home. I was scared and confused and alone and exhausted because I hadn't slept in forty-eight hours, and—"

"It doesn't matter," Dean said, cutting her off as her voice began to get a little more desperate. He gave her knee a quick squeeze. "You're home now."

She grinned. "It still doesn't feel real," she said honestly. Suddenly, a terrifying thought crossed her mind, and she seized up. "Wait. Hold on. If I'm back…you two didn't do something stupid to save me, did you?"

Sam snorted. "No, but we sure as hell tried."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Sophie retorted.

When Dean didn't say anything, Sam continued, "We tried to make deals and other pretty awful negotiations to get you back. But thanks to the Ritual of Fire our souls are untouchable now. No one could take us."

Sophie's eyes narrowed, and she looked angry for a moment, but then she didn't seem to be able to find it in her heart to stay angry. "Well, good," she finally said. "I would've been pissed if you had traded yourselves in for me."

"But we'd have done it in a heartbeat," Dean said without hesitation. "And we tried, Soph. We tried everything."

His voice was pleading, as if begging for her forgiveness. But as far as Sophie was concerned, he had nothing to be sorry for. He'd done above and beyond what any parent does for their child.

But she knew she'd never convince him that he wasn't to be blamed. So she just said, "If it wasn't you, and it wasn't Cas…how am I alive?"

Both Sam and Dean just glanced at each other. They'd both been thinking about that, too, but as of that moment there was no explanation. "We don't know," Sam finally admitted. "Do you…remember anything unusual?"

"More unusual than dying and coming back to life?" Sophie asked. "Nope, that about tops it for me."

"So you just…woke up?" Sam prodded.

Sophie looked down at her lap, staring into the depths of her coffee mug as she let her mind slowly open up to that day. "I was confused," she said in a soft voice, "because I didn't realize that I was alive. I thought it was another…."

Then she stopped. _Another kind of torture_, she almost said. But she wasn't ready to talk about that. She wasn't ready to relive it. Not when it was still so fresh in her head. Not when she could remember the horror and agony of Hell like it was her present reality.

Sam and Dean seemed to realize that they might have pushed too far, because Dean straightened up. "Well, doesn't matter who saved you right now," he said. "You're here."

"Yeah," she said, grinning slightly. She looked around the bunker, marveling at how at home she felt. She still felt like she was in shock to a certain degree. "I'm here. I still can't believe it, to be honest. I'm kind of scared it's all a dream, or…."

Both Sam and Dean knew exactly what she meant. They'd both been to Hell. They both knew that torture didn't always mean physical agony. Sometimes it meant mental trickery, convincing someone they were free of Hell and then dragging them back. So of course Sophie was afraid it was all just another part of Hell, another level of torture.

Sam sat down next to her and looked at her in the eye. "If this was some dream or some demon trying to mess with your head," he started seriously, "would I know about that time you spilled coffee all over Dean's Black Sabbath record and replaced it with a Taylor Swift-Justin Bieber mix CD?"

"You did _what_?" Dean exclaimed, caught off guard.

Sophie couldn't help but grin. "Sorry," she said meekly. "I was planning to take that to the grave." She paused. "Well, I guess I actually did do that." She winced at her own terrible humor, but she was happy to see her dad smirk a little bit, even if it didn't reach his eyes.

"I forgive you," Dean offered. "But only because you just came back from the dead. Any other time and I'd force you to listen to the wonderful music you managed to destroy. On repeat. Forever."

Sophie grinned. "Yeah, you guys are definitely not a figment of my imagination. You're too…you."

"Glad that's cleared up," Sam said, throwing her a wink.

Sophie grinned, and then her grin fell. "So…I never got the chance to look at a calendar or anything. How long…."

Dean's face fell, too. "Almost a month," he told her, his voice filled with a deep shame, like it was his fault she had been dead for that long.

"That's it?" Sophie responded, shocked. "It felt like…."

"Like almost a decade?" Dean asked somewhat bitterly, with that self-loathing tone Sophie knew too well. "Sounds about right."

She was quiet for a moment. A month. She'd only been gone for a month. Even though it had felt like almost ten years of torture, it'd only been a month. School hadn't even started back yet. Her friends might not even know she was dead—

And then, for the first time since coming back to life, her boyfriend crossed her mind. She groaned and put her face in her hands. "Jack." She heard Dean shift in his seat, and when she looked back up, Sam, too, looked uncomfortable. "What?" she asked. "What happened?"

Sam leaned back in his chair. "He called a lot," Sam said. "But we, uh, never answered. And then he came by a few days ago, and…."

"I was a dick to him," Dean said plainly. "I told him you were dead and I slammed the door in his face."

Sophie couldn't help but let her mouth drop open a little bit. "What? Dad, c'mon, really?"

"He wouldn't go away," Dean grumbled. "And I wasn't exactly in the mood to deal with him."

Sophie shook her head. "I should call him," she said, and she stood up quickly with the intention of finding a phone and getting in touch with Jack.

When she stood, however, she immediately felt a huge wave of dizziness hit her, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Dean and Sam shoot to their feet as she started to fall forward, stopping herself from crumpling to the ground by grabbing onto the edge of the table.

"Woah, woah, easy," she heard Dean's voice say into her ear, and then she became aware of hands on her shoulders, keeping her upright.

Her head was spinning, and while she had enough command over her body to keep herself standing as long as she held onto the table, she had gone a little pale and had begun to shake.

"Soph," Sam's voice echoed in her ears. "Sophie, what just happened?" When she didn't immediately respond, he continued, "Sophie, when's the last time you ate something?"

She just stood there quietly, trying to think back. Those two bites of a burger in Asheville…that'd pretty much been all she'd eaten since coming back to life, unless coffee counted as food. "Um…," she started.

She heard Sam mumble something about grabbing her something to eat, and then the hands on her shoulders pulled her backwards and sat her down into a chair. "Easy, sweetheart," Dean said, making sure she was alright before continuing. "Why the hell did you get coffee before grabbing something to eat?"

"I wanted coffee," she said plainly, putting her head in her hands as the world continued to spin. "I didn't realize I was hungry."

"Have you not eaten _anything_?" Dean asked, shocked. "Nothing in the last two days?"

"I tried to eat a burger a few hours before leaving Asheville," she said into her hands. "But I just couldn't eat. Too stressed, too anxious, too scared."

Dean didn't know what to say. Luckily for him, a few seconds later Sam came back into the room, a hastily made peanut butter and jelly sandwich sitting on a paper plate in his hands. Dean looked at it and frowned. "Really, Sam? The girl's about to lose consciousness and you make her a damn PB&amp;J?"

"We're not exactly well stocked right now, Dean," Sam snapped. "And this is better than all the leftover crap in the fridge." He set the plate down in front of Sophie. "There you go."

"Thanks," she mumbled, and she grabbed it quickly and took a bite. "Oh my God, this is the best PB&amp;J ever," she moaned.

"Yeah, she was definitely starving if she thinks your food tastes good," Dean said to Sam.

"It's a PB&amp;J, Dean, you can't mess it up," Sam said.

"Sure you can," Sophie said, swallowing her mouthful of sandwich and staring up at them knowingly, still looking a little out of it. "You've got to get the peanut butter to jelly ratio down to a science, and there's also the issue of jelly flavor and bread type. Also, PB&amp;Js are objectively better when cut in triangles and not in half."

Dean and Sam grinned. "Wow, kiddo," Dean said after a moment, as Sophie took another bite of her sandwich. "I really missed you."

She looked up at them, swallowing her third bite. "You look awful, by the way," she said in a voice that wasn't mean or teasing in the slightest, only concerned. "Both of you. When's the last time either of you actually had a good night's sleep?"

"About the last time you did," Dean said. "We dozed a bit while you were passed out, but for the most part…I wanted to be awake when you woke up. To make sure it wasn't all some big cosmic joke."

Sophie nodded. She finished off the sandwich and stood up, this time feeling significantly less dizzy, although still a little bit weak. "You two should get some sleep, at least a few hours," she said. "There are things I need to do anyway."

"Things? Sounds ominous," Dean remarked, looking at her closely. "What things?"

"I need to try and get in contact with Cas or Remy or both. They should know I'm okay," she said. "And I should talk to Jamie. And... Jack."

Sam gave her a somewhat pitying look. "Maybe one of us should be there when you talk to Jack," he offered. "He wasn't exactly in a great place when we last saw him."

Sophie shook her head. "It doesn't matter. I'm not getting back together with him, so it's not like I need to salvage the relationship."

Both Sam and Dean looked at her, clearly surprised by this. After a moment where no one seemed willing to say anything, Dean cleared his throat. "I didn't know you two had even broken up," he started.

"We never did, I guess. But I'm pretty sure Beelzebub killing me and dragging me to Hell for ten years counts as a break up," Sophie said bitterly.

"I don't think he knows that, though," Sam said carefully.

"I don't care," Sophie said. "I can't be with him anymore. Better that he knows now rather than later."

Sam and Dean exchanged another look, wary about this sudden change in attitude. "You don't…have feelings for him anymore?" Sam asked, somewhat awkwardly.

But Sophie had withdrawn so much into herself that she couldn't even have an open conversation anymore. She just shook her head. "You guys go get some sleep, and I'm going to get everything sorted out."

Before she could leave, Dean shook his head. "We don't need to sleep now," he said plainly. "We can sleep tonight, to get back on track."

Sophie nodded. "Okay."

"Why don't we just…sift through this whole Jack thing again," Sam tried. "Maybe it's a little soon after—"

"No," Sophie said sharply. It was such a definitive statement that Sam and Dean were shocked. Sophie was never really curt or brusque. "This is just your way of trying to get me to talk about Hell," she continued, and for the first time since her coming back, Dean could see the darkness in her eyes. "And I appreciate your concern, but I will _never _do that, okay? Never."

And then she walked out of the room silently, her arms crossed and hugging herself tightly, as if letting go would cause her to fall into pieces all across the floor.

* * *

When she was gone, Sam looked over at Dean with a sad look on his face. "This is going to be hard."

Dean thought back to when he'd been in Hell. He'd been there four times as long as Sophie, but he was also older, and had a higher tolerance for pain and evil, and he was the farthest thing from innocent. And he'd come out changed, altered, darker and different.

He would be an idiot to expect anything else from his daughter, who was young, unaccustomed to pain of that degree, and full of innocence— in other words, his perfect opposite.

So of course she too would come back changed, altered, darker, and different.

And it broke his heart.

He just shook his head. "Time," he said, thinking out loud. "She just needs some time."

Sam gave his brother a skeptical glance. "I don't know how much time is going to help her," he noted. "I mean, look at us. Time hasn't really done a lot to fix us. The only thing that's helped is facing it head on, and…making peace with it. She's going to need to talk about it."

Dean felt a familiar fatigue in his bones, the kind of tiredness that came with years of even the happiest occasions being tainted with some sort of darkness. "Maybe you're right," he admitted. "But today doesn't need to be that day. We don't need to get in the way of what she feels like she needs to do. And if that's breaking up with Jack…then that's that."

Sam seemed to agree, but he still looked upset. "I just wish…."

He never finished his sentence. He didn't have to.

Dean wished, too.

**Annnnnd another update! The response I've gotten over the past couple of updates...wow, guys. You're the best damn readers out there. Thank you so much.**

**Tough times ahead for the Winchesters. Gear up.**

**Until next time. ~ Lacey :)**


	82. Chapter 82: This Is Everything

**Heads up, this is a long one!**

_Chapter 82: This Is Everything_

Sophie spent a good portion of her first day back home cleaning.

She had tried everything to get into contact with Remy and Cas, but it wasn't working, so she needed a new mission. And upon realizing that the entire bunker was a total mess, she decided to make that mission sanitization. So while Sam went out to grab groceries to ensure that there was actual, edible food around the bunker, Sophie cleaned.

When Dean had first seen her going at the dishes in the sink of the kitchen, he'd tried to pry her away. "Soph, you're finally home," he told her as she stood with a sponge in one hand and a dirty plate in the other. "You really don't need to start cleaning up our mess."

She shrugged. "I don't mind. It feels…normal. I kind of want some normal, you know?"

Dean offered her a small, slightly sad grin. "Yeah, I get it." Then he chuckled. "Although it's kind of sad that normal for you is cleaning after two grown men."

She smirked. "You're lucky to have me," she teased.

"You're damn right I am," Dean said, and then he walked over and rolled up his sleeves. "Alright. So teach me how to be domestic."

Sophie raised an eyebrow at him. "You're kidding, right?"

"No, really, teach me."

"I wasn't wondering if you were kidding about your question, I was wondering if you were kidding about seriously not knowing how to wash dishes," Sophie pointed out with a grin. "Because honestly that's kind of pathetic."

"It's not a life skill I've ever really needed before," he said defensively, picking up a cup out of the sink and glancing inside of it with a mildly disgusted expression. "Sam always did that."

Sophie just looked at him. "You're, like, an old man, and you can't wash dishes?"

"What can I say, I've always been one for take-out containers, not fine china." Then he paused. "Old man? Cut me some slack, I'm not even forty."

Sophie just shook her head. "Well, fine, you can help me be domestic if you want. But make yourself useful and wipe down the counters instead, that's something you can't mess up."

Dean just snorted. "Still smart-alecky, I see," he noted.

"I died, Dad, I didn't get my brain transplanted," Sophie replied as she returned to scrubbing.

Dean just chuckled, and he grabbed a wash cloth and started to wipe down the counters per Sophie's request. After a minute or so of silence, he spoke up, "I take it you tried Cas and Remy?"

Sophie sighed. "Yeah. I just want to see them, you know?" She scrubbed at a coffee mug for a moment, and then glanced sideways at Dean. "Uh…how've they been?"

Dean studied the washcloth in his hands for a moment. "Pretty crappy, to be honest," he said. "Cas has been flying around trying to figure out everything about where you might be and who might be able to bust you out, and Remy…."

When he didn't immediately know what to say, Sophie turned to look at him head on. "What about Remy?"

"He wasn't taking everything that well," Dean finally said. "Not that anyone really was. But he was AWOL for a while, and he didn't show up until a few days ago, actually. He offered to go into Hell single-handedly to find you—"

"Which would have been a suicide mission!" Sophie exclaimed disapprovingly.

"Yeah, one that any of us would have taken up," Dean said sharply. "Remy was just the only one with a means to do it, because he could actually sense your location when you were still connected."

Sophie nodded, going back to scrubbing the mug. "He wouldn't have been able to find me anyway," she muttered. "Not with…." Then she just sighed. "It would've been useless," she finally said.

Dean looked over at her, and he could see that the way that she held herself had changed. She used to stand tall and open, like she could always take on the world. Now she was closed off, curled into herself. It was in the little nuances of how she held herself. Her arms were closer to her body, her head ducked down, like she was perpetually defending herself.

"Soph… I know you don't want to talk about it," he said slowly, and he watched as she turned away from him, as if even his words threatened to hurt her, and that pained him. But he continued. "I get it, sweetheart, believe me, I do. Sam gets it, too. We've been there. But…I'd be a terrible father if I didn't tell you that I'm here if you decide you want to talk. You're not…you're not in this by yourself, okay?"

She nodded slowly, moving the sponge back and forth across a bowl methodically. "I just can't," she said after a long moment, closing her eyes tightly, as if trying to will the images away. "I can't… I can't put into words how bad it was, Dad, there isn't a language that could describe…and then even if I could, I wouldn't want to…." Her hands started to shake, and she stopped talking and had to put the bowl down, making a conscious effort to calm herself down as her memories threatened to overwhelm her.

"I know," he said gently, hating to witness how fragile she was in that moment but knowing that just by being there for her, he could help make her stronger. "Just know that if that changes…we're here."

She nodded. "Thanks."

Dean put down the washcloth and put a hand on her shoulder, giving it a tight squeeze. "Hey," he said. She looked up at him, thinking that if he said one more kind, supportive word, she was going to break apart. "Thanks for teaching me how to wipe off counters, kiddo," he continued, and she let out a short, surprised laugh. "Seriously, imagine if I'd gone my whole life without knowing how to do that. It would've been pretty embarrassing."

"Shut up," Sophie laughed, hitting his arm.

He smirked, glad he could get her to laugh a little, and he was just about to suggest that they stop cleaning and find something else to do when a knock rang out throughout the bunker.

Dean frowned. "Maybe Sam left the key," he wondered out loud.

Sophie shrugged. "You go check. I've got dishes to clean and laundry to do and floors to sweep and shelves to dust and—"

"When I get back from letting Sam in, we're going to have a serious discussion about what you're supposed to do when you come back from the dead, and spoiler alert, the answer is literally anything other than what you just said," Dean said, and Sophie smirked at his words as he left the kitchen. She listened to the sound of his boots crossing the bunker and climbing up the stairs, but she was surprised when she heard him curse loudly when he got to the top of the stairs.

She poked her head out of the kitchen and yelled, "What is it?"

"Nothing," Dean yelled back.

Sophie immediately took this to mean that it wasn't nothing, and she dropped the sponge and dried her hands off before making her way into the main room. She silently walked to the bottom of the stairs and crossed her arms, looking up at her dad. "What's going on?" she asked.

Dean looked down at her, and by the look on his face, he seemed prepared to lie. But then he thought twice. "It isn't Sam," he admitted. "It's Jack."

Sophie's face went blank. "Oh."

"I won't answer it," Dean said immediately. "I'll let him think we're away, and you don't have to—"

Sophie shook her head as she started walking up the stairs. The knocking on the door came again, this time louder and faster. "I need to talk to him. He deserves to hear from me."

When she got to the top of the stairs, Dean looked down at her in concern. "Soph, I know you need to talk to him, but you don't have to right now. No one would blame you if you needed some time first."

She shook her head again. "I just need to rip off the band-aid," she said quietly. She tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear and glanced up at Dean. "Give us a minute? It won't take that long."

"Are you sure?" Dean asked again. She could see the raw concern in his eyes, the surety that she was as fragile as glass right now, and that even the slightest thing could break her. But he was wrong. She'd been to Hell and back and crawled her way out of her own grave and faced her dick stepfather and drove twenty hours and walked nearly eight miles through a thunderstorm to get home. She could handle talking to Jack.

She nodded. "I'm sure."

Dean looked at her closely, like at any second she might change her mind. But when she just stared back at him resolutely, he nodded. "Okay. I'll be down in the kitchen utilizing those domestic skills you've taught me if you need anything."

"Thanks," she said, and he gave her another terse nod before making his way down the stairs and disappearing off into the kitchen.

The knocks came again, and she heard muffled yells on the other side, but the door was so thick she couldn't quite make out the words. With a deep breath, her hand closed on the handle of the door and she pulled it open.

As she was expecting, laying her eyes on Jack felt like a knife to her gut. His hair was disheveled, his eyes bloodshot and rimmed with dark circles, his clothes thrown on haphazardly. "—about time, I've been standing here for—"

But when he seemed to process the person standing in front of him, he froze. He just stared at her, wide eyed. Her arms were crossed over her body, holding herself because she didn't trust herself to not let her hands shake as she looked at him. "Hey, Jack," she said weakly.

He looked at her in amazement. "Am I hallucinating?" he asked.

Sophie shook her head.

"I'm dreaming, then," he said in a daze. "This isn't real."

"I'm real," she said softly.

He took one step closer to her, like he needed to see her at a closer proximity to believe it. "But you're dead," he said in a tight, disbelieving voice. "That's what your dad said, he told me that just a few days ago, he said—"

"I _was_ dead," Sophie said curtly. "But I'm back now. Resurrection sort of runs in the family."

Jack just locked his blue eyes with hers. "But…how?"

Sophie shook her head. "I don't know. We haven't exactly figured it out yet. One second I'm gone, and the next...I'm breaking out of my grave."

Jack just stared at her, and then after a moment, his lips twitched into a wide smile, the one that had always made her heart jump and flutter and do all sorts of crazy somersaults. And this instance was no different. She still felt that pounding in her chest that usually happened when Jack was around her.

But now it was accompanied with a slightly sick feeling, and she knew why.

When Jack took two steps forward and hugged her, it took every bit of her willpower not to push him away. She hugged him back, albeit a little weakly. But when he took a step back and leaned down to kiss her, she turned her head away.

He let go of her. "S," he said in surprise, in the softest, gentlest voice, and it sounded so hurt and shocked by her immediate rejection that her heart ached.

"I'm sorry, Jack," she said, hoping she sounded as sincere as she felt. "I just can't."

"Can't what?" he asked, confused. "Are you…are you hurt? Do you need me to do anything?"

Sophie felt tears prick at her eyes. Was she hurt? He didn't even know. He could never know. "I need you to go, Jack," she said in a voice so quiet, she wasn't even sure if he could hear her.

But Jack had heard her loud and clear. "What?" he asked, just as surprised and hurt as before.

"Jack, we can't do this anymore," she said, not knowing what to say to make him go away, but willing to say whatever it took. "Things are different. We're too different."

Jack just stared at her. "Sophie…we've always known we were different, that was never a problem before, why—"

"Stop," she said, cutting him off. "I died, Jack. I went to Hell. So yeah, things are different now. Way different." He didn't seem to know what to say, so he just stood in front of her with the most forlorn look on his face. "Please, just go."

"S…."

"Don't call me that anymore," she said, feeling her tears getting close to spilling over. "Go home."

With that, she closed the door gently in his heartbroken face, and then she burst into tears.

* * *

The day wore on.

Dean knew that Sophie was hurting from calling it quits with Jack, and he knew that there was something she was holding back from him when it came to the break up. Dean knew she loved the kid, and while he wasn't sure what made her so sure she needed to call it off, he knew that it had to have been a big deal.

But he didn't push her. The last thing he wanted to do on her first day back was push her too hard. So instead of asking her questions, he tried to cheer her up.

He knocked on her door a few hours after the whole Jack fiasco. "Soph?" he called. "Can I come in?"

"Yeah," her soft voice echoed from the other side of the door. Despite the fact that she sounded miserable, Dean grinned. It was so good to hear her voice now. It was so good to open the door to her room and not have to mentally prepare for the rush of agony that accompanied its emptiness.

He pushed the door open to find that she was lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling. She had that look on her face that Dean recognized all too well, that look she got when she was thinking at a million miles per minute. She glanced over at him when he stepped in the room and slowly pulled herself up. "Hey."

"Hey," he said.

"If you're here to talk to me about Jack, please just don't," she said brusquely.

He shook his head. "Nope, not what I'm here for." He grabbed her desk chair and flipped it around in his hand before straddling it backwards, resting his arms on the back of the chair as he looked at his daughter. "I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

She snorted. "Never better." Then her face fell. "Actually, I shouldn't be sarcastic. I should just be happy I'm alive."

"Eh," Dean said, shrugging. "You were always going to come back to life, one way or the other. I wasn't going to stop trying to find a way."

She just gave a little grin and shook her head. "So stubborn."

"I learned from the best," he said, offering her a tiny wink.

Her resulting smile warmed his heart. He'd gone too long without seeing that, and he honestly didn't think he could go that long without seeing it ever again.

After a moment of comfortable silence, she spoke up. "Hey Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"I need to do something," she said, throwing her legs off of the bed and looking at him in determination. "Anything, it doesn't matter. I just can't stay in bed and let myself think too much or I'm going to go insane."

He tilted his head to the side ever so slightly. "What do you want to do?"

She looked thoughtful for a moment. Then her eyes brightened with an idea. "Remember that one time you told me that you'd teach me how to fix up the Impala, that day that Remy fixed my broken cloak?"

Dean was surprised, but he couldn't keep the grin from his lips. "I think I remember that," he said.

Sophie hopped off of the bed and walked to her closet, shutting the door. A minute later, she came out wearing jeans and a loose fitting black shirt. "Okay then," she said, hands on her hips. "I'm ready to learn how to fix a car."

* * *

"I'm proud of you, kiddo," Dean said as they walked back into the bunker from the garage nearly two hours later.

Sophie huffed, her grease-stained arms crossed over her chest. "I broke one of the valve-y things inside of the under-the-hood place, Dad," she groaned. "I learned nothing."

Dean smirked. "I can fix the _valve-y thing_ in about two minutes, Soph. I'm just proud you showed any interest in it at all."

She looked over at him and smiled. "I guess I'm about as good at fixing cars as you are at being domestic."

Dean wrapped an arm around her and pulled her into a side hug. "We all have our gifts," he said, and Sophie snorted, leaning into his hug. "And I'm not giving up on you. In no time you're gonna be an Impala expert, just you wait and see."

She'd missed this. She'd missed hanging out with her dad, doing little activities that were completely meaningless and yet somehow also meant the world to her. She missed the harmless bickering and the tiny affirmations of affection that Sam and Dean showed to her each and every day.

And she wanted to convey this to Dean in some way, wanted him to know how much she'd missed him, but when they stepped back into the main room and saw who was standing next to Sam, Sophie jolted to attention and froze, her mind emptying itself of every thought.

Remy.

She felt Dean's arm tighten around her for a moment, but she stepped away from him, suddenly feeling a little warm. But when Remy turned and made eye contact with her, she forgot how to breathe and her body forgot how to pump blood.

Memories began to hit her with painful force. Memories of Hell, of intense, desperate agony, and then memories of the worst agony of all—the tiny seedling of hope that she had felt deep within her soul, the hope that had come with still being bonded to Remy, the hope that his very existence had injected into her even when Hell's finest was doing his worst to her. She had clung to that tiny speck of hope when she had nothing, when she was being torn to pieces and when most of her blood covered the floor and when her worst nightmare leered at her, hungry, sadistic, unyielding—

And now there was a strange, hollow emptiness where that connection used to be and now wasn't. She couldn't feel Remy's calming presence inside of her heart, and it made her anxiety increase tenfold.

But before she could say anything, before she could even attempt to formulate something to convey what she felt to him, he just blinked and disappeared.

She just stared at where he had been, mouth open slightly, so shocked she couldn't even remember how to move.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Dean glance over at her and then look back to Sam. "What the hell just happened?"

Sam gave Sophie a brief, apologetic glance, and then looked back to Dean. "He had no idea she was alive," he said after a moment. "I just told him a few moments before you walked in. He came here to ask if we had any lore on permanent angel wounds... I think he was trying to fix Ariel. But then I told him Soph was here, and then you walked in, and…I don't know, I think it might have caught him off guard."

Dean glanced over at Sophie again. "Are you alright?"

Her heart had already begun to slow down and she was starting to come out of her state of numbness. "Yeah," she said in a low voice. "I just don't know why he'd leave."

Dean shook his head. "Angels are freaking weird, Soph, who knows why they do anything," he said, trying to play it off like it was nothing.

Sophie knew he was trying to make her feel better, and she appreciated it, but it wasn't working.

It was impossible to explain, how Remy had been the one force in the universe that had kept her from completely losing it down in Hell. Sure, she'd been able to hold onto her love of her dad and uncle and friends for a few years, but she was no Dean Winchester; she couldn't hold onto her humanity for that long without some sort of tangible assistance. And she'd received that with Remy's connection to her.

All she wanted to do was thank him.

But she just nodded. "Yeah, I guess," she said. She looked backwards, at the staircase that led to the bunker door, and she took a small breath. "I think I'm going to go for a little walk, if that's okay."

Dean immediately narrowed his eyes. "I don't think you should be walking around by yourself until we figure out who the hell brought you back to life and make sure no one's following you and trying to drag you back to Hell."

Sophie gave him a look. "If someone was following me, they would have grabbed me back in North Carolina, or while I was on the road, or when I walking through the rain. I'm not going to go far, I just…I just need space to think."

Dean exchanged a look with Sam. "Okay," he finally said, and then he walked over to a nearby desk and pulled a gun out of the top drawer. Sophie had almost forgotten about how nearly every nook and cranny of the bunker contained some sort of weapon. "But I'm going to stay outside while you clear your head, and you're taking this with you. If anything happens, yell or fire away, and I'll come."

Sophie just nodded. She couldn't blame him for being a little overprotective, so she took the gun in her hand.

Dean followed her up the stairs and out the door. He stood by the entrance as she started walking away. "Soph," he said quickly, and she turned towards him. "Don't go too far," he reminded her. She nodded and turned to keep going. "Soph," he said again. Sophie stopped and looked back, a questioning look in her eyes. "Don't go for too long, either," he said.

"Dad," she said, giving him a stern look. "I don't want to die again just as much as you don't want me to die again. I'm not going to do anything stupid. I promise, I'll stay close, and I won't take all day."

Dean nodded, still uncomfortable with letting her out of his sight, but knowing that if she didn't have time to herself she'd probably lose her mind. So he let her go, and Sophie disappeared between the trees.

She didn't go far. Once she got a decent ways into the woods, she stopped and leaned against a tree, standing still and closing her eyes. She tried to calm her breathing down to a slow crawl, like she was in a deep sleep, and she attempted to open her mind up in an effort to let all of her crappy memories escape and let good ones in. It was a strange, haphazard form of meditation, but she didn't know how else to clear her mind.

She listened to all of the sounds around her and tried to take them all in and process them. There was wind coming through the trees, leaves flittering softly in the wind, birds chirping as they hopped from branch to branch, a truck rumbling far away on the highway, the loud rustling of wings that reminded her distinctively of—

And then she opened her eyes as gasped. Because Remy was standing right in front of her, looking at her with dark, withdrawn eyes.

"Remy," she started in a breathless voice.

And then he launched himself at her, grabbing her with astounding strength and pushing her down onto the ground, her back against the cold, dirt forest floor. She cried out as a root she had fallen onto bit into her shoulder blade, and she dropped the gun that Dean had given her.

Remy descended upon her, trapping her legs with his own and rendering her entirely immobile in only a few moments. Her eyes widened in utter shock at the lack of emotion on his face. He just stared hard at her, pinning her against the ground, and before she could say anything to ask him what the hell he was doing, he placed his hand onto her abdomen.

And then she screamed as white hot pain shot through her body, and she tried to throw Remy off of her as a bright light filled the space between them and his hand sunk deep into her chest, into her soul. The pain was overwhelming, and Sophie couldn't help but scream and scream, thinking that maybe Remy had gone crazy and was trying to kill her—

But then Dean came running out of nowhere, and with what remained of Sophie's pain-altered vision, she watched her dad tackle Remy like some sort of linebacker, ripping him off of her and falling into a heap on the ground a few feet away from her.

The pain vanished immediately, and Sophie quickly, albeit a little shakily, pulled herself up off of the ground, sitting up and taking a few deep breaths as Dean shoved himself off of Remy, who was lying back on the ground and taking huge breaths. "Remy, you stupid son of a bitch!" Dean yelled at him, his voice filled with pure fury. "What the hell were you doing to her?"

When Remy didn't immediately answer, Dean looked back and saw Sophie sitting up on the ground, wide eyed and taking deep, steadying breaths. "You okay, Soph?"

She nodded, unable to take her eyes off of Remy. When Dean seemed to deem that she was telling the truth, he turned back to Remy. "What. Did. You. Do?" he asked sternly, grabbing Remy by the collar of his shirt and shaking him.

Remy just shoved Dean's hands off of him and stood to his feet. He looked at Sophie carefully, taking a few steps towards her. And then the emotionless look fell from his face, and she could see the most genuine relief in his hard eyes. "I thought it wasn't you," he told her as he ignored Dean, sounding apologetic, and looking equally shocked to see her. "I had to make sure it was actually you."

Sophie's hand fell over the spot on her body where Remy's hand had been. "What did you do?" she asked in a soft voice, barely above a whisper.

"I didn't do anything," he said defensively, like he needed her to know he hadn't really harmed her. "I know it was painful, but I…I checked to see if it was your soul in your body. It's why I left so quickly there in the bunker, I wanted to make sure…. I couldn't just trust that it was actually you…not since we aren't connected anymore."

Sophie looked up at Remy, and then slowly, she stood up off the ground. She brushed herself off and then looked up at him. "Well, it's me. It's really me. Do you believe that now?"

Remy, standing barely a foot from her, nodded slowly. "I do," he said in a low voice. "It's impossible, but…it's you. It's really you, Ace."

Hearing that nickname made Sophie feel strange inside. A little lost, a little confused, a little elated, and a little uncomfortable.

But she couldn't help what she did next, and before she really knew what was happening herself, she had punched Remy in the nose with everything she had.

He rocked backwards, more out of shock than anything else, and then Sophie put her hands on her hips, mainly to avoid showing that her hand now hurt like hell. "That's for sticking your hand into my soul without my permission, jackass," she snapped, and then she turned on her heel and stomped away from Remy and Dean, back towards the bunker.

She heard Dean mutter, "That's my girl."

"Well, clearly," Remy retorted, his voice distorted by the blood that was surely running down from his nose. "That right hook had Winchester written all over it."

She smirked and disappeared inside of the bunker.

* * *

Later that night, after she'd eaten and showered off from a day of working on cars and punching angels in the face, Sophie was organizing her room. She was picking things up and trying to get the room as spotless as possible, starting her new life off as clean and put together as possible.

She was in the middle of cleaning off her desk when she heard the soft rustling of wings behind her, and she took a breath and turned around, unsurprised to see Remy standing in front of her looking at her intently. She glanced down at herself. She was wearing blue pajama shorts and a dark gray oversized T-shirt that she was pretty sure she'd stolen from Sam at some point. She didn't exactly look all that put together.

But when she looked back up at Remy, the way he was looking at her made her heart stop. The way his eyes lingered on her face, taking in her every feature like it was the single most important thing in the room, one might have thought she was wearing a princess gown. "Hey, Ace," he finally said, a little sheepishly. His tone caught her a little off guard. Remy was never sheepish.

She looked back at him, not knowing what else to say but, "You healed your nose. That's cheating."

He blinked once. "I'm sorry about what happened today."

"I'm not sorry for punching you in the face," she responded bitingly.

He smirked. "You shouldn't be. I deserved it." Then his smirk disappeared. "Honestly, I deserve way worse."

Sophie's eyes narrowed. "Jesus, not you, too. You're blaming yourself for me dying, aren't you?"

Remy glared. "I'm your guardian angel, Sophie. Of course the blame is on me. My only job was to keep you alive."

"Yeah, and Beelzebub's more conniving and powerful than anything else in the universe, and you were sort of a little too busy getting tortured to help me," Sophie said. "Who could blame you for that?"

Remy shook his head. "I can never forgive myself," he said quietly. "Especially after feeling…feeling everything they did to you in Hell…the unspeakable evils that they—"

"Don't," she said sharply, crossing her arms across her chest. "I can't."

He nodded, eyes sad as they met hers. "But Ace. I'm glad you're back. I don't know how it happened, and honestly, I don't give a damn. I'm just glad."

She gave a little grin, looking at him closely. "Me too," she said. Then her grin fell. "But…we're not connected anymore."

Remy nodded. "It feels…."

"Empty," they both said at the same time.

They stared at each other for a moment longer, and then Remy took a couple steps closer to her. She just watched him get nearer to her. "Sophie," he said sternly, "I want you to know that it doesn't matter if our souls are connected or not. I will never stop watching over you, okay? Not while you'll have me." He took another step closer, and they were inches apart. Sophie was starkly aware of every fleck of green and gray in his eyes. "I am wholly your guardian angel. Wholly yours to have if you want me."

She was drawn into him, into his words. And she also couldn't believe it. It was surreal to her that she meant enough to Remy for him to want to continue guarding her even after she had died. It was surreal and incredible.

And when he was so close to her that she could have easily reached out and pulled him closer, she said the first thing that came to her mind. "You saved me, you know," she said, her voice barely above a whisper, casting her eyes downward, unable to look at him face to face. "When I was in Hell, and I thought the pain would never end…feeling you hidden somewhere in my soul kept me sane. It made me cling onto my hope and my humanity. I…I would've lost myself without you. So...thanks."

When he didn't immediately respond, she glanced up at him and was surprised to see that he was somehow closer to her, leaving very little room between them. She was confused by the look in his eyes, a look that she could only explain as being fire and ice, restraint and indulgence, pain and elation.

And then her whole body froze as his head leaned down and his lips hovered above hers, less than an inch of air between them. Every nerve ending in her body was electrified and yet immobile, paralyzed by his closeness. Time was completely still. She just stood, inoperable, not sure if she was okay with what was happening or not, her mind completely clouded over and Remy the only thing she could focus on at all.

She felt his hand slowly wrap around her waist and fall at the small of her back, and his other hand cupped her face like it was the most fragile of china. She breathed in, and suddenly she wanted him, wanted him more than anything. The force of it hit her like a freight train, the sudden acceptance of the fact that she wanted him. And she suddenly realized she had wanted him for a long, long time, far before she'd died and come back to life.

Her breath hitched in her throat as Remy's lips were so close to her own that she could already feel their warmth, and they ghosted across hers, as if testing her reaction, and she turned her head upwards—

And then with a fluttering of wings in her ears, he was gone.

And Sophie stood in the middle of the room, confused, alone, with her fingers lingering on her lips.

* * *

Later that night, when Sophie had done her best to push the incident with Remy as far back in her mind as possible, she sat in the main room with her dad and Sam. She was drinking hot chocolate and listening to them argue about ways to try and contact Cas, who'd been AWOL all day.

It was getting late, the big hand on the clock a little past twelve, and as Sophie silently watched Sam and Dean go back and forth about what they should do in regards to their angelic partner in crime, she couldn't help but emit a huge yawn.

Immediately, Dean turned his head towards her. "Kiddo, maybe you should go get some sleep."

Sophie shook her head, taking a quick sip of hot chocolate. "No, I'm totally awa—" Her words were cut off by another large yawn, and when she shut her mouth she saw Dean smirking slightly.

"Alright, Soph, why don't you call it a night," he said.

She sighed, standing up and grabbing her mug. "If you insist," she said.

"I'll bring the sheets you put in the laundry earlier," he told her as he got up from his seat.

"So domestic so soon," Sophie noted teasingly. "I'm a wizard."

"Alright, Hermione, scram," Dean said grudgingly.

As she shrugged and walked into the kitchen to clean out her mug, she heard Sam say to Dean, "Willingly using Harry Potter references? You must really be glad she's back."

"You know, when you're around nerds so much it's hard not to let it rub off on you," he grumbled back at Sam. There was a pause, and then, "But God it's good to have her back."

Sophie grinned, her heart warmed, and continued into the kitchen, where she washed out her mug and then made her way to her room. When she opened the door, Dean was already there, sheets in hand.

"You're going to have to help me make the bed," he said. "Fitted sheets are harder to defeat than Lucifer."

Sophie grinned, and without saying a word, she helped Dean make up her bed. When she was done, she crawled under the sheets and sat back against her pillows, marveling at how great the bed felt. It had been too long since she had a bed to crawl into.

Dean sat down on the edge of her bed and looked at her. He looked over her entire face, searching it, like he wanted to make sure that she truly wasn't a figment of his imagination. He seemed like he wanted to say something but wasn't quite sure how.

Sophie simply looked back at him patiently. She knew these things were hard for him sometimes.

And then he just said it. "I love you, kiddo," he told her in a low voice, like he wasn't physically prepared to say it but did anyway. "I hope you know that."

Sophie looked back at him, her lips turned slightly upwards. "Of course I know that," she said softly. "You've said that a thousand times, just not with words." She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around his torso, and his arms immediately corded around her as well. "And I love you, too," she said into his shoulder.

Dean pulled away from her and kissed her forehead. "Glad we cleared that up," he said with a chuckle.

Sophie unwound her arms from him and leaned back against the pillows. "Only took his long lost daughter dying, going to Hell, and magically resurrecting, but the notorious Dean Winchester finally says those three immortal words."

"Don't be so dramatic," Dean mumbled in unconvincing annoyance, but she saw his poorly hidden grin. He pulled the covers up over Sophie and then stood up and made his way to her door. "I'll see you tomorrow, kiddo."

"Good night, Dad," she replied. "Thanks."

He paused before turning out her lights. "For what?"

"I don't know," she said with a tiny yawn. "For everything."

He just stared at her for a moment. And he thought about how far he'd come in life, and how somehow nothing had quite prepared him for the kind of love he had for his daughter. He just smiled. "Goodnight, Soph," he said, and then he flipped the lights off and left the room.

* * *

Three hours later, Dean was in a deep, dreamless sleep. It had perhaps been the most peaceful sleep he'd had in years, much less in the time Sophie had been dead.

So when the screaming began to echo through the halls and into his room, he wasn't quite able to process it at first. He didn't wake up immediately, so entrenched in sleep that his body physically repelled the idea of waking up.

But the screaming persisted, and when Dean became cognizant enough for the terrified, gut wrenching, ear-piercing screams to register in his mind, he bolted upright in his bed, his heart rate going from resting to roaring in two seconds.

Sophie.

He shot out of bed, just aware enough to grab the gun he kept close to his bed at all times, and sprinted out the door. His mind was running away with itself, trying to figure out what the hell could be happening. Did Beelzebub somehow find them? Did something else? Did something follow Sophie home and lie in wait and pounce when least expected?

When he got to Sophie's room, the door was open, and the screams were tearing through Dean's brain. He ran into the room, gun lifted, but when he saw the scene in front of him he froze.

Sam had beaten him to the room, and he was crouched down beside Sophie's bed, trying desperately to wake her up. But she was beyond waking, her body writhing and turning on the bed as she screamed so loudly and so painfully that Dean couldn't even imagine what had to be going through her mind to cause that kind of reaction.

Sam looked over at Dean with helpless eyes as the older Winchester barreled into the room. "I don't know what to do!" he yelled over her shrieks.

Dean made his way over to them, placing the gun on Sophie's bedside table and sitting on the edge of the bed. "Sophie," he said sharply. "Soph, kiddo, you need to wake up."

Her screams just magnified, interrupted only by short, desperate sobs. Dean stared at her, feeling powerless.

"Sophie," he said again, putting his hands on her shoulders. She tried to throw off his hands, only screaming louder. He tried a different tactic, moving his hand to her head and gently pushing the hair out of her face, running his fingers through her damp red hair as soothingly as possible. "Sophie, baby girl, you're okay," he said in that soft, low voice that was reserved just for her, that he could never use for anyone else. "You're here and you're safe and I'm not letting anything near you, okay? Please wake up. Please."

It took a minute of gentle coaxing, but eventually the screams turned into loud sobs, and the sobs turned into whimpers, and then suddenly her eyes flew open.

Dean had never been more relieved to see those green eyes looking at him, except for maybe when she'd come back from the dead. But then she sat up quickly and turned her head, looking around quickly, like she couldn't quite figure out where she was, her breath coming out in loud, terrified gasps.

"Hey, Soph, it's just me, just me and Sam," Dean said, taking his hands off of her, not wanting to freak her out too much. "We're just—"

But before he could say anything else, she jumped out of bed, ran into her bathroom, and slammed the door shut so quickly that Sam and Dean couldn't think anything of it. But then they could hear the sound of her getting sick echo through the room, and Dean looked at the door darkly.

Sam shook his head, eyes more brown than hazel in the dim light of the room and filled with concern and sadness. "There's gotta be something we can do to help her."

Dean didn't respond, just walked to the bathroom door and knocked on it. "Sophie, sweetheart," he called out. The sound of her throwing up had died down, and he leaned against the door. "Are you okay?" he asked, and then he cringed.

Of course she wasn't okay.

There was the sound of the toilet flushing and the sink running for a long time. And then, after another minute or so, the door opened, and Sophie stepped out of the bathroom.

Her eyes were wide and dark and haunted, and they were also filled with tears. Upon seeing Sam and Dean and looking between them, the tears began to spill over and she sniffed, trying to keep it in but failing, and after a few moments of holding back she burst into tears.

Dean immediately stepped forward and she hid her face in his chest like a terrified child, clinging to him as she cried desperately. Dean just rubbed her back, mumbling anything to her that he thought sounded comforting. But he knew she was beyond comforting. Beyond helping. He knew that better than anyone, except for maybe Sam.

Sam left after a few minutes. He knew that it wouldn't be the last time he'd be running into her room late at night to the sound of her nightmare-induced screams, and that knowledge saddened him. But for now, Dean was with her. And that would have to do.

As for Dean, he held her until she couldn't stand on her own two feet any more, and then he walked her back to her bed.

"I'm sorry," she hiccupped into his shoulder. "I'm sorry, I woke you up, you were probably so tired, I'm really sorry—"

"Hey," Dean said in a voice that somehow managed to be sharp and soft at the same time. "You never have to apologize for this, got it?"

As her cries died down, she just sat down on the bed, and Dean realized that even though she'd probably grown three inches since the day he first met her, she had never looked smaller in her life. She looked up at him, eyes sad. "I can't go back to sleep," she whispered. "I couldn't do it when I first got back, and it took me staying awake for forty-eight hours and walking miles through the rain to finally knock me out. But when I try to sleep normally…." She shuddered. "I can't do it."

He sat down next to her, looking at her closely. "It's going to suck for a long time," he said honestly. "But Sammy and I are going to be here, the whole way, okay? You're never going to have to do this alone."

She nodded. "Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you stay here? Just for tonight?"

He offered her the slightest of smirks. "If you thought I was going to leave you again after that, then you're not the intelligent Winchester I thought you were."

She choked out a small laugh, and though her cheeks were tearstained and her eyes were tired, she offered him a grin. "Remember how I said thanks for everything?" she asked as she leaned back against her pillows and curled up into the corner where her bed met her bedroom wall.

Dean settled down on his back on the opposite end of the bed. "Yeah," he replied after a moment.

She glanced at him before turning back to the wall. "This is everything," she said softly.

Dean didn't reply. He didn't have to.

He thought that maybe he'd dislike just lying there, waiting for his daughter to fall asleep. Instead he found that his time was actually well occupied thinking about how he could try to help alleviate her pain from her memories. Thinking about what her nightmares might consist of. Thinking about the millions of ways he wanted to end Beelzebub and anyone who so much as looked at her while she'd been in Hell.

But after about half an hour there came a tiny whimper from the corner where Sophie had curled up, and he turned over sadly to see her begin to move around a bit in her sleep. The whimpers grew steadily louder, and Dean softly moved his hand over to her and repeated the same process of stroking her hair as he had the first time that night. "You're okay, sweetheart," he said quietly. "You're okay."

She quieted down and rolled over in her sleep so that her forehead was resting on his upper arm, and he let her rest her head there, knowing he'd probably get all kinds of pins and needles in his arm but not really caring, not as long as she got some sleep.

And after an hour of her resting beside him, and when he was content that maybe she was finally getting some much needed rest, he let himself drift off to sleep as well.

**Sorry I missed the update last Saturday! I was still in my Thanksgiving coma. Still am, tbh.**

**Thank you all for reading, reviewing, following, favoriting... You guys always make my day.**

**Updates will hopefully be consistent these next few weeks, but if they're not, I'll let you know on my tumblr. It's just LaceyoftheTypewriter.**

**Until next time ~ Lacey :)**


	83. Chapter 83: Auras and Arguments

_Chapter 83: Auras And Arguments_

The next few weeks were the worst few weeks of Sophie's life, pre-Hell or otherwise.

She had thought the nothing could top the days immediately following the death of her mother; those had surely been the worst up until now. But after being dead, Sophie had a new appreciation of what it _really_ meant to die. And while her mom had undoubtedly gone too soon, but at least she was in Heaven.

Sophie had Hell to deal with.

The nightmares were so vivid and real that no matter how many times she had them, she could never distinguish the dream from reality. The pain was as real as the first time; the fear was as real as the first time; the utter desperation and hopelessness were as real as the first time.

For the most part, she didn't go a single night without waking up screaming and crying to the point where she got sick. Each time, either Sam, Dean, or both were right there by her side, coaxing her awake, trying to assure her that she was safe. They waited at the door to her bathroom as she vomited up the practically nonexistent contents of her stomach. It meant the world to her that they were there for her, but honestly, it didn't do much to help.

She barely got any sleep. And the images of Hell played on a loop in her mind day and night; the things that had been done to her were on repeat, the physical and the mental torture never-ending.

In the few weeks she'd been back, she'd lost a lot of weight, based purely off the fact that every night she couldn't seem to keep down what was in her stomach after her nightmares. Sam and Dean weren't oblivious; they could see the toll that Hell was taking on her, they just had no idea how to deal with it. Both of them had been to Hell, and they knew the kind of terrors that were haunting her. But they hadn't been seventeen years old when they got sent to Hell. Sophie wasn't even an adult yet, and she was struggling to overcome the very worst pain the universe had to offer.

There was nothing Sam or Dean could do to make that okay.

During the day Sophie did her best to put on the façade for Sam and Dean that she was fine, that she was nothing more or less than happy to be alive. But it was getting harder and harder to maintain that façade, since each and every night a little bit of Hell crept back into her heart and stole away her peace of mind.

Every night, either Sam or Dean stayed with her after the screaming, sleeping in her bed in an attempt to make her feel more secure. And to an extent, it worked. Usually once one or the other settled down next to her, their presence helped her fall back into a less fitful but still awful sleep.

But ultimately, it wasn't enough. Sophie could feel herself fading, bit by bit. Life itself was not enough to keep her living. She needed to find some way to escape this hell on earth, this endless cycle of insomnia and nightmares and total paranoia. Or she was going to lose it.

So after the umpteenth night of waking up with a throat raw from screaming and a stomach churning, and seeing a comforting yet all-too-familiar form of Sam sitting right next to her, she resolved that something needed to change.

"I'm here, Soph," he whispered as she bolted upright and slowly realized she was back in reality, and he folded her into his arms. She shook slightly as she let her head fall onto his shoulder. "I'm here."

She rode out the feeling of needing to throw up, something she was getting a little bit better at as days wore into weeks, and then she pulled away from Sam. She looked up at him through the dark, finding his sad hazel eyes close to her own. "It's never going to get any better, is it?" she asked him. The silence made her soft voice seem to reverberate through the room.

Sam shook his head, leaning back and getting comfortable in her bed. "It feels like that now," he told her. "But you're a strong person, Sophie. You'll find a way to overcome this."

She leaned back with him, lying side by side, leaning her head against his arm. "I'm not that strong," she whispered.

Sam looked over at her, and he could see her eyes staring off into the darkness in her room. "Soph," he started carefully. "I know that it would be hard…but just talking about it could help. Dean and I, we've been there, we—"

"No," she said stiffly.

Sam looked at her desperately, like he was watching her slowly kill herself. "Sophie, you can trust us, we're not going to think any differently of you. We'll love you, no matter what."

"No," she said, this time with a little more force.

He just took a deep breath, accepting defeat for the moment. He maneuvered his arm so that it was under Sophie's head and his hand fell on her opposite shoulder, and she shifted, using his arm as a pillow and curling up into his side. He glanced at her, so vulnerable and in need of nothing more than his presence, and he gave up. "Why don't you just get some rest?" he said.

She didn't tell him what she wanted to say. That it didn't matter whether or not she got any sleep, she still wouldn't get any rest.

So she just nodded and, after a few minutes, pretended to fall asleep. Then when Sam fell asleep beside her, she slowly and carefully crept out of bed and into the main room.

The lights were dimmed since everyone had already gone to bed, and Sophie didn't bother to turn them on. She wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly wishing she'd pulled on a robe or a sweater over her tank top and pajama pants, but not wanting to risk going back into her room and waking Sam up.

So instead, she called out into the empty air, "Remy?"

In barely any time at all, she heard the familiar sound of rustling wings, and then a voice to her left said, "Sophie."

She turned to see Remy, and she couldn't help but immediately blush. She hadn't spoken to him at all since that moment in her room the day she'd come back to life, that moment where he'd almost kissed her and then disappeared.

She had tried not to think too much about it. Because to admit that she liked Remy…that was a can of worms she didn't have the emotional stability to open at that moment. And the thought of trying to explain to Jack that the day she broke it off with him she also had almost kissed her ex-guardian angel…that was just too much to deal with.

But now, Remy was standing right in front of her, and she was forced to confront those awful feelings.

He looked great, as usual. His dark golden hair was slightly windswept, likely from his quick flight to the bunker. His eyes, green-grey forests as usual, were dark and fixed upon her own. He wore a grey Henley and jeans, and Sophie vaguely wondered if he'd picked up on Dean's sense of style.

Then he opened his mouth. "Are you alright?" he asked.

For some reason, Sophie took the words like a kick to her gut. She remembered days when she'd call Remy down just because she was bored and wanted a friend to talk to, or somebody to hold down one side of the fitted sheet while she tried to fix the other corner, or when she needed help with her Latin homework and Sam wasn't around. He'd always pretend to be annoyed to be summoned by her, but she always knew he enjoyed her company, and as time wore on, she enjoyed his.

And now when she called him down, he assumed she was in some kind of trouble. The times had certainly changed.

"I'm okay," she said quietly. "Nightmares."

He nodded. "I'd imagine."

She fidgeted for a moment, pulling on a loose string on the bottom of her pajamas. Then she looked up at him and just blurted it out. "Can you do anything to make them go away?"

He looked confused. "What?"

"The nightmares," she elaborated. "I'm going to lose it if they never stop happening. I can't sleep or eat that much, and I wake up my dad and Sam almost every night. And I just can't keep going on like this, without it getting any better at all. So I was just wondering…if you could help me."

The last words came out almost as a whisper, and she looked down at her bare feet, unable to meet his gaze.

It took a while for him to answer. "We're not connected anymore, Sophie," he said slowly.

Her cheeks flamed up. "Right," she said quickly, wringing her hands together in embarrassment. "Right, you've got other obligations now, I get it, I'm sorry, I didn't want to—"

"Ace," Remy said sharply, interrupting her. She looked at him in surprise, and saw an almost annoyed look in his eyes. "Do you really think that not being bound to you makes me any less likely to do everything within my power to help you? Do you think that just because we don't have that supernatural connection anymore I could deny my very natural connection to you and to you alone?"

Her heart skipped a beat and she tried to ignore it. "I don't know," she said miserably. "I don't know anything anymore. I just know that if something doesn't change soon, I'm going to just…break."

His gaze softened. "The only reason I brought up the fact that we're not connected anymore is because it makes it a lot harder for me to target the source of the nightmares and keep it from causing them. Not because I don't want to help you. All I want to do is help you."

Sophie's hands fell to her side. "So you can't do anything?"

Remy shook his head. "I can help a little, I think. Just not like I would have been able to before."

Sophie nodded, and then looked at him closely for a moment. "Can't we just…reconnect our souls?"

Remy raised an eyebrow. "Would you even want that?"

Sophie thought about it. There had been a lot of annoying things that came with Remy being connected to her soul. The constant feeling she was somehow being watched, for one. And the inability to ever be anywhere where she couldn't be tracked. But Remy's presence had always brought her a certain degree of peace. And she'd grown to care deeply about him. And he had always known when she was upset, and the best way to cheer her up. He had always known exactly what words she needed to hear at any given moment.

Bottom line, being connected to him made her calmer, safer, more secure. And she missed that.

"I don't know," she said quietly. "Maybe."

He just stared at her, and then heaved a big breath. "I don't know if that's even possible. Souls aren't meant to be stuck together and pulled apart and stuck together again."

"They're also not meant to be sliced up and carved into by Hell's High Torturer, but that's what I'm working with," Sophie said, a little sharply, but not enough to really sound mean.

Remy just looked at her. "I'll look into it," he said shortly. "For now, I can try to grant you some peace of mind."

"Thank you," Sophie breathed in relief.

"It won't be enough," he warned her softly. "The damage done to you is…thorough. These aren't like your old nightmares. These are the aftereffects of real, harmful wounds to your soul. And the only medicine for that is time."

Sophie wrapped her arms around herself. "How much time?" she asked in a small voice.

Remy looked a little helpless as he stared at her. "I don't know, Ace," he replied sadly. "But I'll help you however I can until you get there."

He took a couple steps closer to her and she tried to ignore the way her heart jumped. "I can't take away all of your pain. Even if we were still tethered to each other…I couldn't take it all away. I just want you to know that I can't perform miracles here."

Sophie just gave a low, humorless chuckle. "Honestly, you being here wanting to help me at all is a miracle in and of itself, Remy," she said softly. "I don't know if you can tell, but I'm sort of desperate here. I'll take anything I can get."

He gave her a sad smile, taking the lasts step towards her. He lifted his hands and pressed two warm fingers to her forehead. She expected to immediately get knocked out, but he lingered for a moment. Then he said, in a voice so low that Sophie might have dared to call it hoarse, "I shouldn't have tried to kiss you, Ace. I'm sorry."

And before she could so much as tell him not to be sorry, or accept his apology, or even say his name, his grace poured out into her body, and she collapsed into his arms, unconscious.

* * *

When Sophie woke up, she felt like she'd finally given her body its necessary amount of rest.

She'd still had nightmares. Raging, terrifying nightmares of being stabbed, gutted, torn apart, and violated in the worst ways that her personal torturer could have come up with, but for the first time, she knew they were nightmares. They didn't feel like reality. And while it was still agonizing and frightening and infinitely dark, she had known that it would end.

And that made all the difference.

When she rolled over and woke up in the morning, she found that Sam had already left. She was surprised. Normally when she woke up, whichever brother had stayed with her was still there, conked out after likely spending the entire night trying to keep her from her nightly terrors.

But this morning, she was alone. And when she looked at her alarm clock, she saw that it was eight in the morning.

That was the most she'd slept in a long time.

She got up and stretched for a long time, feeling her back crack in multiple places. Then she hopped out of bed, went to her closet and switched out her pajamas for jeans and a T-shirt before walking out of her room barefoot and throwing her hair into a ponytail.

When she got to the kitchen, she saw the coffee already waiting for her in the pot. Mechanically, she grabbed the pot and poured coffee all the way up to the rim of her favorite coffee mug, sipping some of it out of the mug and then filling it even more to replace what she had drank. Then she walked into the main room and saw, to her surprise, Cas.

She was so surprised that some of the coffee sloshed out of the mug and onto her hand, but she barely felt the burn. "Cas!" she exclaimed.

When he saw her, the look on his face was one of bewilderment. "Sophie?"

She rushed towards him, quickly setting the coffee mug down onto the table and throwing her arms around him. After a moment in which he seemed to be processing the fact that she was hugging him, he finally wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tightly. "I heard from Eremiel a short while ago saying you were back, but I couldn't quite believe it. I had to see for myself, and now I'm very glad that I did," he told her, and his voice sounded a bit more human than usual, and it made her grin.

After a moment, though, she stepped back from him, and then gave him a halfway scathing look. "Where have you been?" she asked. "I've been back for weeks!"

He looked so apologetic and regretful that she immediately felt bad for being so blunt. "I'm so sorry, little lion," he said. "Heaven's reverted back to utter and total chaos, and a few weeks ago the number of demons unleashed from Hell increased nearly a hundredfold. Now it makes sense; they're likely in search of you."

Her shoulders slumped. "Yeah, that's what Dad and Sam have been saying. It's why they pretty much never let me leave the bunker except to exercise, and even then, it's barely any time."

Not that she wanted to leave the bunker all that much. But she didn't mention that.

"For now, that's safest, until we can figure out how to hide you from them. The only problem with that is…." He trailed, looking at her in uncertainty and hesitation.

She frowned. "The only problem is what?"

He let out a long breath. "Any protection worth anything against demons, Beelzebub and his minions alike, would involve a soul touch. And frankly, I don't think your soul is in any condition to withstand that right now."

"How would you know?" she muttered.

"Because I can see it," Cas told her.

Sophie's eyes widened slightly. She didn't even know that was possible. "You can…see my soul?" she asked in astonishment.

He nodded, looking at her with sad, yet warm, eyes. "Your aura, more accurately. What energy your soul exudes."

Dreading the answer, and yet desperately curious about this angelic ability of Cas', Sophie asked, "So what does mine look like?"

"It used to be white, with a faint rosy gold glow," he said, grinning at her in fondness. "Very pure and beautiful, exactly as one might imagine your soul to look." Then his grin turned wistful. "Now it's…stormy. Darker. It kind of…flickers."

For some reason, the news that her aura had changed made Sophie extremely anxious. She began to chew on her bottom lip, trying to comprehend what exactly this all meant.

Seeing her discomfort, Cas quickly continued, "But aura's are fluid. This will be temporary, Sophie. You will heal."

"Everybody keeps saying that," she grumbled. "But it's been weeks and I'm still feeling like it's the first day back."

Cas cocked his head to the side. "Did Remy not stop by last night and offer you some assistance in falling asleep?"

Sophie blushed. "How did you know about that?"

"He came to speak to me afterwards," Cas admitted candidly. "He seemed distraught."

Sophie nodded. "Things have been…weird with him since we got disconnected," she said. "But he _did _help me out a little bit. I still had the nightmares, but I was able to sleep through them. Which is a start, I guess."

Cas nodded gently. "It is."

Sophie sighed, and then she picked up her coffee mug and took a long drink. "Where're my dad and Sam?" she asked.

"Dean's around here somewhere," he said. "And Sam just left to run a quick errand."

"Errand?"

Cas nodded. "He's turning in your forms and necessary papers for school next year, I believe."

Sophie just stared at him. "He went to Lebanon Central?"

"That _is _the name of your high school, if I recall."

"So that I can keep going there?"

Cas frowned. "Is there a problem?"

Sophie took another sip of coffee and scowled. "Yeah, there is. I'm done with school."

Cas just stared at her. "But you love school," he stated blankly.

"Loved," Sophie corrected. "But I'm not going back there, and no one can make me."

"Pretty sure me being your father, I can make you go back."

Sophie turned to see Dean walking into the room, looking at her suspiciously. Her cheeks flushed, partially with embarrassment and partially in frustration. "Don't worry about it, Dad, it's not a big deal," she grumbled.

He stepped into the room, tossing an oil stained rag down onto the table, likely from a round of cleaning up the Impala in the garage, and crossed his arms as he stared at Sophie. "No, it sounds like a big deal. So talk."

She gripped the coffee mug tighter in her hand. "Fine. I'm not going back to school in August. Good talk."

Dean just stared at her. "That's not talking, Soph," he finally said.

"I don't need to talk," she snapped. "I'm seventeen. I'm allowed to make my educational decisions from here on out without your approval."

Dean's eyes widened slightly. This tone of voice was completely new to him. Sophie had certainly been snappy with him before, but she'd never been so unrelenting and closed off. Sophie usually had the gift of picking her battles wisely, and when she did enter an argument, she did it with an open mind and was willing to compromise.

But this wasn't the usual Sophie.

"Why?" Dean asked in as calm a voice as he could muster. He knew he couldn't rise to her level of frustration. If she was anything like him—which, undoubtedly, she was—his raised voice would only add fuel to the fire.

"Why don't I want to go to school?" Sophie replied with a slight laugh. "Where do I start? For starters, going there puts every single person in that place in huge danger. But that's not the only reason, if you want honesty. I just don't _want _to go."

"But _why_?" Dean asked again, letting a little bit of his frustration show. Patience had never been his forte.

Sophie glared at the floor. "Because school doesn't matter anymore. Working through math problems and talking about the differences between the American and French Revolutions doesn't mean anything to me now, not when I could spend time figuring out how to rid the world of _actual _problems. Evil problems."

Dean had a feeling about where she was going with this, and he didn't like it at all. But he still had to ask. "What are you trying to say?"

She looked up at him, pure steel in her eyes. "I'm done with school. I want to be a hunter."

**Uh oh. I think we all know how Dean's going to take this new info...**

**Sorry this one's a bit shorter than usual! This week is finals week and tomorrow is my birthday so I've been squeezing in writing time in between studying and paper writing and celebrating. But at least I have something to give you guys! More next Saturday, hopefully! ~ Lacey :)**


	84. Chapter 84: In Due Time

_Chapter 84: In Due Time_

Dean stared at his daughter, trying to decide if he'd heard her correctly.

_I'm done with school. I want to be a hunter_.

After a few moments of realizing he hadn't just had a stroke, he snorted. "Yeah, sorry sweetheart, there's no way on heaven, hell, or earth that's happening. You can be whatever the hell you want to be—doctor, lawyer, hitman, stripper—but you're not being a hunter."

Sophie rolled her eyes. "You'd really rather me be a stripper than a hunter?" she asked sardonically.

"You're damn right I'd rather that," he said loudly and sharply. "Strippers don't get their souls dragged to Hell just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time!"

"That didn't happen to me because I was a hunter, Dad!" Sophie exclaimed. "That happened because of the worst collection of coincidences in the world. But maybe if I _were _a hunter, I could've stopped it somehow. I could've stopped _him_."

"Soph, you're a seventeen-year-old human being and he's an ageless demonic son of a bitch," Dean said gruffly, trying to lower his voice but unable to be patient any longer. "You being a hunter wouldn't have changed any of that."

"You don't know that!" she exclaimed. "All anyone knows is that I was stupid, I let Beelzebub kill me, and then his psycho demon BFF dragged me into Hell for ten years and did whatever the hell he wanted to do to me! So sorry if school doesn't seem quite so relevant to my life anymore!"

And with that, she snatched her coffee mug up into her hands and stomped out of the room.

When she was gone, Dean made eye contact with Cas, who cleared his throat. "I cannot lie, that was incredibly awkward to witness," he said sheepishly.

Dean just scowled and shook his head. "That's the first time she's so much as _hinted _at Sonneillon or anything that happened to her in Hell since coming back," he noted in a low voice.

Cas looked at his friend sadly. "I imagine it's quite hard for her to think about, let alone talk about. I know it was hard for you."

Dean released a long breath. "Cas, you haven't been here. She hasn't gone a night without screaming her lungs out from the nightmares. She doesn't eat as much, and whatever she does eat she usually throws up after her nightmares. She hasn't touched a book since coming back. She just…goes on runs, wanders around the bunker, cleans like she has OCD, avoids all her friends' phone calls. She's not the same."

Cas nodded. "She never will be the same person she was before," he replied. "You know that."

Dean just stared at his hands on the table. "She doesn't need to be the same," he said. "She just needs to be okay. And she's not right now."

Cas looked at him. "Well, since Remy helped her out last night, she'll at least get some more sleep from here on out. That's a start."

Dean straightened up, looking at Cas with narrow eyes. "What do you mean, Remy _helped her out _last night?" he snapped sharply.

"If my tone made it sound like the nature of his assistance was somehow sexual, then that was my mistake," Cas said. Then his face took on a confused expression. "But she didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what?" Dean prodded impatiently.

"She called Remy late last night, after one of her nightmares," Cas told him. "He can't do as much as he used to be able to do when they were connected, but he used his grace to change her state of mind while she slept so that her nightmares aren't as vivid and real to her. She still has them, but now she knows they're not real, and her body can sleep through them."

Dean was surprised at how grateful he immediately was for Remy. He remembered the nightmares he'd had in the months immediately following his return from Hell. They'd been startlingly real, and it had taken him a long time to get past that fact. If Remy was able to push her past that stage so early on…that was a good thing.

"She still has a long way to go," Cas continued. "But she's in good hands."

Dean nodded. "So what am I supposed to do now, about this whole school thing?" he grumbled, suddenly wishing he had a glass of whiskey, or at least a beer. "She's always been the least rebellious teenager in the world. She's so boring that I was _proud _of her when she got suspended from school, and she didn't even do anything wrong then. I've never had to deal with this."

Cas gave him a flabbergasted look. "I have no experience with fatherhood, Dean. I have no idea what you should do. Honestly, I'm just glad you're the one that has to figure it out and not me."

"Thanks, man, I always appreciate a helping hand," Dean shot at him.

At that moment, the door to the bunker opened, and Dean looked up as his brother walked down the stairs, making his way into the main room. "Well," Sam started, tossing his keys aimlessly onto the table, "the papers are in, and Sophie's officially a senior at Lebanon Central. How crazy is—Cas? Where the hell have you been?"

Cas looked from Sam to Dean and then back to Sam. "Trying to stop riots in Heaven. If I had known Sophie was alive again, I'd have come sooner."

It was Sam's turn to glance between the other two people in the room, and he seemed to detect the underlying tension. "Am I missing something?"

"Yeah," Dean barked shortly. "_Your niece_ has decided she wants to drop out of school and become a hunter."

Sam just stared at him and then snorted. "Yeah, Dean, sure. Sophie loves school pretty much more than anything. She fought you tooth and nail to stay _in _school. She wouldn't just drop out now."

"You so sure about that?" Dean asked him pointedly. "Because she just exploded at me when I told her she had to stay in school and then she just ran off to her room."

Sam was stunned. "Are you serious?"

"No, Sam, this is all just one big joke and we're all going to have a really big laugh afterwards and drink hot chocolate by the fire while we sing Kumbaya and pretend Sophie never went to Hell and everything is completely and totally fine."

"Okay. I get it, not a joke," Sam allowed, looking over in the direction of Sophie's room, troubled. "Did she say why?"

"She said it doesn't mean anything anymore," Dean said in a tired voice. "Why learn calculus when you could be saving people and hunting things?"

Sam shook his head. "I'll try talking to her."

Dean looked at Sam like he was crazy. "Dude, you were in her exact shoes. You left school for hunting. You're exactly what she wants to be."

"That's the point," Sam said slowly. "Have you seen our lives? I'm living proof that dropping out of school to hunt just leads to death and pain. I mean…." He paused for a moment and exhaled. "Not that I haven't liked some of my life. I was meant to be a hunter. But I've also died God knows how many times, gotten myself addicted to demon blood, said yes to Lucifer, gone to Hell, wandered around the earth without my soul…. That's not what we want for her, and whether she knows it or not, that's not what she wants for herself, either."

Dean took in what he said, and then nodded. "So you'll talk to her."

"I'll talk to her," Sam assured him. "I'll do it now, too. Might as well rip it off like a Band-aid." And then he made his way out of the room and down the hallway towards Sophie's room.

Dean looked over at Cas, who'd been standing silently off to the side observing the two brothers' bickering. "What do you think, Cas?" he asked. "Does she _really _want to be a hunter?"

Cas shrugged. "I have no idea. She never seemed interested in it…before. But now? Who knows?"

Dean ran a hand over his face. "Why is this so damn hard?" he snapped in annoyance.

"Fatherhood?" Cas asked. "I'm almost certain that God designed fatherhood to be difficult on purpose, actually. Transference, or something like that."

At that moment, Sam appeared back in the room, eyes narrowed. "Dean, we have a problem."

"What now?" Dean yelled in exasperation.

Sam took a few more steps into the room. "Sophie's gone. So is her car."

* * *

Dean stood up from his seat. "What do you mean, she's gone?"

Sam gave him a frustrated look. "I mean she's sitting in her room, brushing her hair and listening to Taylor Swift," he snapped, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "It means she left the bunker, Dean, what else would you think that meant?"

"God _dammit_," Dean yelled loudly. Today was going from bad to worse to downright awful. He turned to look at Cas. "Can you help us find her?"

Cas nodded. "When she came back from Hell her cloak was removed, and I haven't redone it for fear of damaging her soul even further. Hold on."

With a fluttering of wings, Cas was gone, and Dean looked back at Sam. "How did we not notice her leave?" he asked in exasperation.

"Sneaking out of houses is pretty much ingrained in every teenager's DNA," Sam offered. "She's just never done it to us before."

Dean wanted to kick something. "The last time she did this, she went to freaking North Carolina and almost got herself killed on the way back."

"She'll be fine," Sam said mechanically. "She probably just needed to clear her head."

"You heard Cas," Dean shot back. "She doesn't have a cloak anymore. Every time she leaves this bunker without one of us keeping an eye on her, she's at risk."

Before Sam could reply, Cas appeared a few feet in front of them in a flurry of fluttering wings. "She's perfectly fine," Cas said right off the bat. "She was driving the car to Jack Williams' house, but halfway there she decided not to go through with it. She's driving back here now."

Dean was surprised at how relieved he was. Or maybe he wasn't surprised. The past couple of months had made him hyper-paranoid, especially concerning his daughter. He looked at Cas. "Do you think you can keep an eye on her until she gets home?" Dean asked.

Cas nodded. "Of course." And with another flurry of wings, he disappeared again.

* * *

A little less than half an hour later, Sam and Dean were waiting tensely in the main room when they heard the door to the garage open and shut, and a few moments later Sophie walked into the room, looking a little shy.

Sam and Dean watched her as she entered the room, tucking her car keys in her pocket. She looked up at them carefully, waiting for one of them to say something, and when they didn't, she sighed, "I know I shouldn't have done that."

"You're damn right you shouldn't have done that!" Dean snapped loudly, unable to hold himself back. "We've gotta get you cloaked _big time_ before you're allowed to step one non-chaperoned foot outside of that door." She just glanced at the floor, and he tried to take a deep breath, only achieving mild success in calming himself down. "What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking I couldn't be in the same place as you," she said sharply, and even though Dean knew she didn't mean it antagonistically, he still felt a hurtful pang in his chest. "You were just going to come into my room and look at me with your annoying concerned father eyes and make me feel guilty about wanting to be a hunter. I didn't want to deal with it."

"Well you're going to have to deal with it, because that's the only look you're ever going to get from me if you keep up this stupid career track," Dean said, standing up from his seat. He looked over at Sam, who offered him a barely perceptible nod. "I'm going to go install a GPS tracking device in your car while Sam has a chat with you."

Sophie just stared at him. "You're not serious, are you?"

Dean just shot her the bitch face that he had perfected over the course of his life which clearly conveyed the notion that he was dead serious, and then he walked out of the room, leaving Sam and Sophie alone at the table.

Sophie crossed her arms and looked at her uncle. "Is this good cop bad cop? I took a drive, I didn't rob a bank."

Sam shook his head. "I just wanted to talk to you."

"Sam, I love you, but I don't want to talk to you."

"Too bad," he said sternly. "Sit."

Sophie thought about ignoring him and just storming off to her room, but she figured she'd already used up the teeny tiny amount of patience that the Winchesters possessed when she'd run off in her car. So she silently sat down in the chair farthest from Sam and stared at the table.

"I just have one question," Sam said. "Do you want to stop going to school, or do you want to be a hunter?"

Sophie was a little confused. "What?"

"I only ask because if you want to be a hunter, let me tell you what you're in for," Sam said shortly, leaning back in his chair and looking at her with an even. unrelenting gaze. "Everyone around you that you love, everyone that you let into your heart and into your life, they will die, and there's a good chance it will be because of you. Jack will die, regardless of if you broke up with him. Jamie will die. Remy will die. Dean and I, we'll probably kick the bucket sometime, too. You're a lot of monsters' public enemy number one, and if you put yourself out into the supernatural world so blatantly like a hunter would, you're never going to be happy."

Sophie just shook her head. "I could be happy," she said quietly. "I mean, you and Dad do it, the whole 'saving people, hunting things, family business' thing. It works for you. You…you're doing a lot of good in the world."

"Maybe," Sam said. "But we've done a hell of a lot of bad, too. There've been times where…where I couldn't figure out who was the human and who was the monster. And we've lost…everyone. So I'll ask again. Do you want to stop going to school, or do you want to become a hunter?"

Sophie shook her head. "I want to do something that matters," she said.

"What matters to you?" Sam asked.

She was quiet for a long time. Sam didn't prod her again; he simply waited for an answer. Sophie just clasped her hands tightly in her lap and finally squeezed out, "I don't know anymore."

Sam's eyes softened. "That's okay. You don't need to have all the answers right now. But to be a hunter that doesn't get herself killed, you need to know. One hundred percent."

"And if I one hundred percent wanted to be a hunter?" Sophie challenged. "What then?"

Sam gave her a long look. "I don't know," he admitted truthfully. "Dean will never be okay with it. And I'm not a fan of the idea. But we'll cross that bridge if we come to it."

"So what now?" Sophie asked.

Sam sat back in his chair. "You finish high school," he said shortly, and when she started to protest, he cut her off. "Even Dean managed to get his GED, but you've got a hundred times more potential than he did, so you need to graduate. Don't get me wrong, I want you to go to college and study something you love and go out and kick ass in the real world, but all that's required of you is high school."

"Going to school puts people in danger," Sophie said sharply.

"Not if you're massively cloaked," Sam replied. "Which Cas is working on."

"Beelzebub killed me not too far from here," Sophie retorted. "I'm sure he can put two and two together and figure out what high school I go to."

"Remy would go back to school with you," Sam said. "And there are wards and rituals we can do to keep the school and the kids safe. We'd figure it out."

Sophie ran a hand through her hair, chewing on the inside of her cheek as she thought about it. Finally, she exhaled. "Sam, I just can't go back to high school and pretend that I care about the Homecoming queen and the number of wins the football team has and who's dating who when I just went through literal Hell."

Sam nodded. "I know. It's not going to be easy. But…if you just sit here and stew in your pain and anger forever, Soph, you're going to lose your mind. Trust me on that. At the very least…school might be a good distraction."

She didn't see a way out of this. No matter how hard she pushed, neither Sam nor Dean would ever budge on this, she could tell. So she nodded curtly. "Fine. I'll finish high school. But I'm _not_ going to college."

Sam put his hands up in surrender. "One step at a time. If you feel that way at the end of the year, fine. For now, just _try _to be open-minded."

She stood up from her chair. "Yeah, okay," she said, not meaning a bit of it.

As she turned to leave the conversation, Sam piped up, "And Soph?"

She turned back around, not doing much to conceal her annoyance. "What?"

"I wish I never had to leave school," he told her seriously. "I loved it there. And while this is the life I know I'm supposed to lead… I wish it wasn't that way. All Dean and I want for you... is for you to have a choice."

She looked at him. "I know," she said, and for the first time in the conversation, her voice didn't have the biting edge to it. "I just don't know if that's even possible anymore."

And then she left the room.

* * *

Far away, in a large flat in Raleigh, North Carolina, Beelzebub sat in desk, drinking dark red wine from a tall glass as he thought and thought and thought.

About his life. About his plans. About his future, which was so close he could taste it.

About the Winchesters. About the girl. About how she had unwittingly become the key to his operation. About how her screams got him one step closer to fulfilling his deepest desires.

A knock came at the door, and with a sigh, Beelzebub placed his glass back down onto the desk. "Come in."

One of his servants entered the room. "Sonneillon is here, sir," the servant said, tipping his head low.

Beelzebub nodded. "You can let him in."

The servant bowed out, and a minute later a tall, light-haired man entered the room. Beelzebub rose from his seat, acknowledging the man with a nod as he reached behind him and grabbed another wine glass and the wine bottle off of the counter behind him and poured another glass. He offered it to the man and said, "It's good to see you, Sonneillon."

"You as well, Beelzebub," the demon replied, accepting the glass of wine and taking a drink.

"How is Hell?" Beelzebub asked conversationally. "I imagine since losing your favorite plaything, it's been less fulfilling."

"I get by," Sonneillon responded, his cold, dark eyes flickering slightly. "I still don't understand how she got away."

"Neither do I. And neither does she or the Winchesters, I suspect. I have some of my most capable followers investigating that issue," Beelzebub responded. "But it doesn't matter. We'll get her back soon enough."

"Why not now?" Sonneillon asked, and Beelzebub could see the bloodthirsty look in his eyes. "We know where she is. And she's vulnerable."

"Because we cannot fail to apprehend her. If we do, we'll never have another chance," Beelzebub said. "And the Winchesters and their angel companions are doing everything to keep her hidden. Our next attempt to get her will be our last, and I want to make sure our plan is foolproof and perfectly timed."

Sonneillon looked mildly annoyed. "You were right," he noted in an almost bored voice. "She _is_ my favorite. I want her back." His assertion was whiny and childish, like a toddler who'd had his pacifier stolen from him.

"You'll get her back, Sonny," Beelzebub assured him. "In due time."

"How much time?" Sonneillon asked, annoyed. "I'm not patient, Beelzebub. Nothing brought me more satisfaction than playing with the little Winchester. I'm afraid the longer I have to wait for her, the more I might…act out."

"Act out however and with whoever you want," Beelzebub told him with a careless wave of his hand. "It doesn't matter to me. But we cannot get her back until shortly before the next celestial event under which we can do the ritual to release Lucifer. Any earlier, and the Winchesters could devise some kind of plan to get her back, and I won't make the mistake of underestimating them. The moment is still months away."

"So…what?" Sonneillon replied in distaste. "We let her go about life until then?"

Beelzebub shrugged. "I don't see why not. Besides," he said, a dark glimmer in his eye, "I saw what you did to her when I came down and visited. It was excellent work. I'm guessing what you did will stay with her until we're able to recapture her. So you can rest easy knowing that even though she's free from Hell, she's still under your command."

Sonneillon grinned, a heartless, black grin that would have stopped anyone's heart in pure fear. "I'll drink to that," he said, lifting his wine glass up in the air and then taking a long draw from it.

Beelzebub smiled, finishing what was left in his glass and setting it back down on the desk. "We'll have our fun," he assured his colleague. "If I remember correctly, we made quite a pair when I visited. When we worked together…I don't think I've ever heard a scream quite so satisfying."

Sonneillon returned Beelzebub's smile. "You'll have to join me when we get our hands on her again. For old time's sake."

"I'd enjoy that," Beelzebub said. "I must admit, I was jealous of all the time you got with the little bitch. After all the trouble she caused in finding a way to get her dad out of his deal, I wish I'd been able to be a bit more…hands on with her."

"Like you said," Sonneillon replied, eyes practically glittering. "In due time."

Beelzebub glanced out the window, into the dimly lit city streets below. He didn't know why the thought of Sophie Winchester in pain brought him so much pleasure. As a general rule, innocent humans in pain always amused him, but with the Winchester girl, it felt like especially sweet justice against all the obstacles her dad and uncle had made him overcome in the past year or so. And on top of that, she was just so _responsive _to pain….

He tore himself away from thoughts, looking back at his partner, and he smiled. "In due time."

**Hi friends! Another semi-short chapter...finals week hit me hard and stole most of my time, sorry. But now it's over! Someone asked me if, now that it's break, I would be updating more frequently, and unfortunately the answer is no. Writing still takes me time, and I want to make sure it's good, and while I'll have more time I'll also be hanging out with family and friends. Because Christmas.**

**But don't worry! Updates are forthcoming. And there is fun stuff ahead. **

**Until next time... ~ Lacey :)**


	85. Chapter 85: The New Year And The Nemesis

_Chapter 85: The New Year And The Nemesis_

The first day of Sophie's senior year of high school had finally arrived.

Everything had been put into place. Cas and a couple of his angel loyalists had thrown up every ward around Lebanon Central that could possibly be made, and on one of Sophie's better days—and those were still few and far between—he recloaked her.

Cas was much more thorough this time around, adding extra protections that hadn't been there before and also ensuring that he and Remy alone would be able to track her. By the end of it, she was completely undetectable from any sort of supernatural entity except for Cas and her ex-guardian angel.

The process had been incredibly painful, much more so than the first time Cas had done it in that sketchy motel just hours after Dean and Sophie had met for the first time. But Sophie had just sucked it up and squeezed Dean's hand until it left bruises, refusing to scream despite every cell in her body telling her to do otherwise, refusing to cause her family the pain of seeing her suffer more than she already was on a regular basis.

Besides, pain was now incredibly relative to Sophie. And while cloaking had hurt like a bitch, nothing could compare to what had been done to her in Hell.

So with the cloaking now over and done, she was completely okay to go to school.

And Dean practically had to drag Sophie out of bed to get her to go.

"Soph," Dean barked, turning on the light in her room. "School starts in an hour!"

Sophie rolled over in her bed and pulled the comforter over her head. "Go away," she whined.

Dean marched over to her bed and yanked the sheets off of her, to her angry sounds of protest. "We have a deal," he reminded her. "And part of that deal is that you get your freaking high school diploma. Which means going to your first day of senior year."

Sophie sat up and threw her pillow at Dean with as much force as she could muster up, which wasn't that much. It bounced off him lightly and hit the floor. "I have a fever," she shot at him.

"Amateur," Dean responded fluidly. "I thought you were supposed to be the clever one out of the two of us?"

"I think I contracted swine flu," she amended.

"Try again," Dean deadpanned, turning her radio on loudly to a random station, which started blaring some old Nickleback song that made the both of them cringe.

"I'm pregnant!" she yelled over the sound of the stereo.

Dean glared at her. "Not even funny," he remarked, walking back towards her door to leave. "Get up, get dressed, and be in your car and out the door in thirty minutes."

"But Dad, in my delicate state, you can't possibly make me—"

"_Now_."

He left and she groaned, rolling out of bed, shutting the radio off, and stomping to her closet. She was exhausted—her dreams had been particularly bad the night before, so she hadn't slept very well. And she was dreading seeing both Jack and Remy at school. In fact, the only person she was really looking forward to seeing was Jamie, except even that was tainted by her break up with Jack. For all she knew, Jamie hated her.

Sophie wouldn't blame her if she did.

Grudgingly, she pulled on a pair of dark wash jean shorts, a black tank top, and a black hoodie. She threw her hair into an unsightly bun, slid her feet into some worn out leather flip flops, and grabbed her backpack before heading out the door.

She made a quick detour through the kitchen to fill up her travel mug with coffee, and as she was twisting the cap onto the top she heard, "Are you seriously walking out the door like that?"

She looked up to see Dean looking at her disapprovingly. "What?" she challenged.

"You look like you just rolled out of bed. And the sweatshirt is so big it looks like you're not even wearing pants," Dean remarked curtly.

"Cool," she responded distantly, making sure her phone and her car keys were in her pocket. "But I'm leaving now, per your request."

"Soph, really?" Dean said as he followed her out of the kitchen and towards the garage. "You're going to act like this just because I'm making you go to school?"

She stopped outside of the door to the garage, turning around and giving him a glare. "Yes." She turned and opened the garage door, but the part of her that hated fighting with her dad kept nagging at her, and so she paused and turned around to look at her slightly discouraged father. "But I still love you, even if you're being a big jerk," she grumbled.

She didn't miss the beginning of his slightly surprised grin and amused expression, and as she turned back around, she heard him mumble, "I'll take it."

Pretending she didn't hear him, she walked through the door and shut it tightly. And after hopping into the car and sticking the key in the ignition, she was off.

* * *

As she expected, she was one of the last students to pull into the senior parking lot at school, and she was certainly the worst dressed. Most of the girls were wearing sundresses or skirts, showing off the tans that they'd earned over the summer. When Sophie stepped out of the car, she got a few waves from some of her classmates, but mostly people just looked at her in surprise. She looked barely put together, and for someone who usually got to school early and made herself at least look a little presentable, it was surely a shock.

But honestly, she couldn't care less.

She just ignored them all, grabbing her backpack and locking her car before heading inside the building to her assigned locker. She set it up quickly and quietly, ignoring most of the people who waved at her, until about ten minutes later she heard a voice she couldn't ignore.

"You have some explaining to do."

She looked up quickly to see Jamie standing in front of her, looking perfect, as usual. She wore a white sundress with a jean jacket over top of it, and her caramel colored hair was cut straight at her shoulders. Her hands were set firmly on her hips and her blue eyes glared at her friend.

Sophie stared back at her. "I didn't want to hurt Jack," she started in a rushed voice, "I just—"

"This isn't about Jack," Jamie cut her off shortly. "This is about us. You didn't talk to me for the whole summer!"

"I'm sorry," Sophie replied, internally cringing. "It was…it was a really long summer."

"Did you think that just because you and my brother broke up, we couldn't be friends anymore?"

"Honestly?" Sophie replied, giving Jamie a long, measured look. "Yeah, that's kind of what I thought."

Jamie looked exasperated. "I love Jack, but I love you too, Sophie," Jamie said. "It's definitely going to be a bit awkward, but…I mean, I want to still hang out with you if you want to hang out with me."

Sophie grinned. And suddenly she felt like an idiot and an asshole for pushing away Jamie's friendship at a time in her life when she'd likely needed it the most. "I'd like that."

Jamie grinned, and then leaned in closer, a conspiratorial look on her face. "Good. Because you're gonna need friends. Did you hear who transferred back to Lebanon Central?"

Sophie raised an eyebrow. "No. Who?"

"Mason Anderson," Jamie said in a low voice.

Sophie exhaled. "Of course. Why _wouldn't_ the universe try to screw around with me even more than it already has?"

Jamie gave her an apologetic look. "Yeah, I guess he got kicked out of his fancy boarding school and he's back here for senior year."

"Great," Sophie grumbled. "Well, if he thinks he can pull anything over me, he has another thing coming."

"Yeah," Jamie said in an almost distant voice, examining Sophie closely. "I get the feeling that a lot's changed between sophomore year and now."

Sophie just shrugged. Pulling Jack into her world of monsters and hunters had sort of made sense at the time, especially after he'd been possessed by a demon, but she would be damned before she pulled Jamie in, too. So there was really no way to explain it to her sanely. "I guess," she said, somewhat lamely.

Jamie just nodded a little bit, glancing at her watch. "Well, all I know is that even though you're like the nicest person ever, I would not want to be Mason if he tries to mess with you again." She looked back up at Sophie and gave her an apologetic smile. "I've gotta run to my art history class. See you at lunch?"

"Um…."

"Jack won't be there," Jamie assured her. "He's going to eat with Harry. I've figured out a custody agreement until you guys can stand to be near each other again."

Sophie choked out a small laugh. "Custody agreement?" she repeated.

"Yep," Jamie said, a tinge of forced brightness in her voice. "I'll see you later, 'kay?"

"'Kay," Sophie replied, and she watched as Jamie flounced off to her class.

Sophie finished dumping her stuff in her locker and grabbed out a notebook before locking it. She glanced at her phone to view the class schedule the school had mailed her. Her first class was an advanced literature class, which she'd signed up for back when she actually gave a damn about school and college applications and stuff like that.

She made a mental note to switch that to something stupid like ceramics later on, and then she made her way to class.

* * *

She walked into the room right as the bell rang. To her dismay, the class was incredibly small, and it had the three people in her life that she really didn't want to see.

Remy, Jack, and Mason.

A trifecta of unnecessary and unwelcome conflict.

Remy, of course, would be in all of her classes just like last year, so she'd have to get used to seeing him after their frustrating almost-kiss that he apparently wished had never happened. Jack, she was going to have to avoid at all costs, because seeing him made her feel like she was perpetually kicking a helpless puppy.

And Mason…maybe she did want to see him. It'd be nice to have someone upon whom she could take out all her frustration. It'd be nice for someone else to be her punching bag for once, instead of the other way around.

All three of their heads turned as she walked in, and she ignored all of them, sitting as far to the back as she possibly could. Before any of them could do anything to communicate with her, the teacher walked in and started brightly introducing himself to the class. He must've been new, since the school was pretty small and Sophie had never seen him before, and he looked relatively young, maybe in his mid-thirties.

"Hey everyone," he said, shrugging out of his blazer and rolling his sleeves up, smiling at them all with kind light eyes. "I'm Levi Derré, I'll be teaching Advanced Placement English Literature this semester. You can all call me Mr. D. Now, since we're a small class, I figured we'd go around and introduce ourselves so we can all get to know each other. And because I like to shake things up, let's start from the bottom of the roster. So…." He took a moment to glance at the class list taped to his desk. "Winchester? Why don't you stand up and tell us your name, grade, what you did this summer, and a fun fact about yourself?"

Sophie tried really hard not to roll her eyes, and when she stood up she saw Mr. D's eyes zero in on her, taking in her haphazard outfit and expressionless face. "I'm Sophie, I'm a senior," she started, and from there on her voice became uncaring and insincere. "This summer I died, went to Hell, and came back to life, but not without some seriously screwed up PTSD, let me tell you. And my fun fact is that everyone says I'm a summer but really I'm more of an autumn."

With that, she promptly sat down and pretended to be incredibly interested in her right thumbnail. The class was silent, clearly trying to figure out what the hell was her deal. She could feel Remy's eyes boring a hole through her skull, but she didn't look up.

Mr. D just cleared his throat. "Williams?"

Jack stood up and gave his introduction, and Sophie tuned out. She didn't care. She couldn't care.

So with each student standing up and giving their spiel, Sophie stared at the corner of the room and tried to force her mind to not drift off into daydreams. Because her daydreams were never daydreams anymore, just stark memories of Hell that she could never quite shake off, not even for a few moments.

Mr. D handed everyone a syllabus, giving Sophie a long glance as he handed her the paper. She figured she'd freaked him out, but she didn't care. She'd told Sam and Dean that she'd graduate from high school, not that she'd maintain her old standard for grades. She couldn't care less what Mr. D thought of her. She couldn't care less what _anyone _thought of her anymore.

Finally, after what felt like forever, the bell rang, and Sophie grabbed her backpack and prepared to leave when she heard, "Miss Winchester? Do you think you could stay after class for a few minutes?"

She looked up in surprise to see Mr. D staring at her expectantly. She just nodded. It's not like resisting would help her get out of this any sooner. "Sure."

Everyone filtered out of the room, Remy taking the longest to leave. Sophie knew he'd be waiting right outside the door when she got out, always watching over her, even when it was totally unnecessary.

The door closed and she turned to her teacher. He was leaning against his desk, arms crossed over his chest, looking at her curiously. He scratched his head for a second, ruffling the dark curly hair on his head. "How're you doing, Miss Winchester?"

She looked at him, baffled. "Peachy."

"I'm sorry," he said, shaking his head. "It's just, teachers talk, and you're the golden star of this school. From what I've heard, you're an incredibly bright and driven young woman, and so after today's class, I wanted to just make sure everything was okay."

She took a small breath. "Yeah, uh, the Hell thing was a joke, obviously, I was just—"

"Messing with me, yeah, I get it," he said, looking at her closely. "Just know if there's anything you need to talk about, I'm here, or any of the teachers here would love to—"

"Mr. D?" Sophie said, cutting him off. "I appreciate that. But that's also kind of weird. So thanks, but I'll keep my problems to myself." She adjusted the backpack on her shoulders. "I'm going to be late to my econ class, sorry."

And then she walked out.

* * *

The rest of the day was rough.

In every class Sophie had to do some iteration of the introduction she'd had to do for her lit class, and for the rest she just spouted some bull about how she'd spent her summer vacationing. Remy was in every single one of her classes, as she expected, and Jack and Mason were in quite a few, too—an unfortunate consequence of the high school being so small.

By the time the day was over, Sophie felt like pretty much all of her mental energy was gone. So she quickly made her way to her locker after her final class, hoping to grab her things and go before the halls flooded with meandering students.

Of course, she couldn't possibly be that lucky. Just as she closed her locker, Remy was there, leaning against the locker next to hers. "Hey, Ace."

She looked at him and then scowled. "Get out of my way."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed."

"Shut up, Remy, I'm just trying to get home."

He shook his head. "You're going to talk to me," he said firmly.

"No I'm not."

"Yes," he said firmly, staring at her resolutely. "You are. We're going to be seeing a lot of each other, and we're not going to do the whole cold shoulder thing again. Not this time."

"You want me to talk? Fine, you asked for it," Sophie shot at him, shifting her backpack onto her shoulders and glaring at him. "I feel bad for being so mad at you because you really helped me with my nightmares, but it doesn't stop the fact that I'm mad that whatever you did isn't enough, because I still get freaking awful nightmares even though I know it's not your fault. And I'm pissed at you for encouraging my dad and Sam to force me to come back to school. And also, you were a dick for almost kissing me and then telling me you wished you hadn't. You know how to make a girl feel _really _good, Remy." He stood there, shocked. "So there you go. I talked. See you tomorrow."

She brushed past him angrily and made her way out to the parking lot. She was fuming and filled with a deep desire to punch something. This had been the worst possible day back to school, and she couldn't fathom what could make it worse.

When she made it to her car, she stuck her hand in her pocket and fished around for her keys, and just as her fingers closed over them she heard a voice behind her say, "Long time no see, Winchester."

So much for her day not getting any worse.

She gritted her teeth together and turned around to glare at the face of Mason Anderson. He'd changed a lot since sophomore year. His hair was longer, his body taller and more muscular, his clothes less obnoxiously preppy and more laidback. And maybe it was just a trick of the light, or the fact that Sophie's concept of evil had recently undergone a huge transformation, but he looked like less of a natural asshole.

She glared at him. "I don't have any reservations about breaking your nose again if you take a single step closer," she warned. "So seriously, stay the hell away from me."

Mason just grinned at her. "I just came over to say hi," he told her. "I don't want to ruin your life anymore. I've changed. Kind of."

Sophie just looked at him. "Kind of?" she finally asked.

"I'm less of an asshole to other people and more of an asshole to myself," he said, grabbing a water bottle out of his backpack and tossing it to her. She caught it deftly and looked at him questioningly before unscrewing the cap and taking a whiff. Immediately, the scent of cheap vodka hit her nose.

She closed it back up and tossed the bottle back to him. "They didn't teach you to drink quality alcohol at that fancy boarding school of yours?"

"They did," he noted. "That's why they kicked me out."

She snorted. "Well, awesome for you. Either way, your alcoholism isn't my damn problem. Have a great life, Mason."

She turned and unlocked her car, opening the door and tossing her backpack in. As she sat in the front seat and stuck her key in the ignition, Mason called out, "I heard you broke up with the bookworm!"

Sophie slammed her door shut, flipped him the bird, and proceeded to pull out of the parking lot.

* * *

When she got home, she quickly parked her car outside of the bunker and made her way in through the front entrance.

Her flip flops cracked loudly against the staircase, making no secret of her entrance, and soon both Sam and Dean were waiting down below for her.

"How was school?" Sam asked brightly as she reached the bottom.

She looked at his hopeful face and at Dean's tentative expression. Then she just rolled her eyes, huffed in annoyance, and silently stalked past them and towards her room. A few moments after she'd turned the corner, the brothers heard her door slam shut.

Dean turned to Sam. "Sounds like it went great," he remarked bitingly.

Sam exhaled. "Well the first day was bound to be rough," he said resolutely. "But this will be good for her."

Dean just shook his head. "You don't think this is pushing her too hard?" he asked, voice filled with doubt.

"I don't know," Sam admitted. "But if we do nothing, she'll go crazy here. And at least school is a better distraction than hunting."

"Speaking of," Dean said, "we have a pile of cases we could be attacking, but we can't leave her alone yet."

Sam nodded. "I'll make some calls, see if some other hunters can take care of it for now. We'll stay here for a little while longer to make sure she's not going to do anything crazy, but eventually we'll have to go back."

Dean nodded. "I just need to know that she'll be okay before we leave her for any long period of time," he muttered.

Sam nodded in return. "Me too. But hey, we'll have Cas checking in on her, hopefully, and Remy if the two of them can get along again. What even happened to make her so mad at him anyway?"

"I don't know, Sam, I'm not exactly familiar with the long term consequences of getting your soul ripped apart from your guardian angel," Dean snapped.

Sam looked frustrated. "Maybe you should slow down the sarcasm and start trying to actually figure out what's going on here," he suggested pointedly.

Dean shook his head, wandering over to the table in the main room, where Sam had compiled files for unsolved cases they'd pinpointed across the continental United States. "Well, I'm going to call up Remy, see if he can give us a rundown on how her day was."

"Or," Sam said in annoyance, "you could just go into her room and ask her yourself."

"And come face to face with the wall of teen angst she's putting up between her and us? Yeah, I don't have enough years of fatherly experience to deal with that, so I don't think so." He pulled out his phone and dialed a number. After a moment of waiting, Remy answered.

"What?" the angel grumbled.

Dean raised an eyebrow. "What's got _your_ feathers ruffled?"

"When's the last time you stepped foot in a high school and left feeling like having a cheerful conversation?" Remy snapped, annoyed.

"Easy," Dean replied swiftly, "the time Chelsea Benson and I hooked up in the janitor's closet. She was a cheerleader, Dad dropped Sammy and I off at a school for a couple weeks, and she had these massive—"

"I don't want to know about your depraved adolescent exploits," Remy interrupted. "What do you want?"

"I just wanted a Sophie update," Dean told him. "She wasn't exactly a ray of sunshine when she got home today."

"Dean, why don't you just go ask her yourself?" Remy asked in annoyance.

"Because any time I try to talk to her she just rolls her eyes and storms off," Dean replied impatiently. "So c'mon, just tell me."

He heard Remy breathe deeply. "She hated it," Remy told him. "The only good thing was that her friend Jamie doesn't hate her for breaking up with Jack. But Jack's in a lot of her classes, and that's messing with her. I'm also in all of her classes, and she's not my biggest fan right now, so she's trying to avoid me—"

"Yeah, what the hell is going on with you two?" Dean asked. "You used to be…chummy."

"Lovers' quarrel," Remy snapped in a sardonic tone. "It doesn't matter. She just hates school right now, Dean, you're just going to have to accept that."

"So that's it?" Dean pressed. "She doesn't like being around Jack and you two are fighting?"

"Some boy that wasn't here last year came back for senior year and she's also not a big fan of him," Remy added as an afterthought. "I don't know much about him, but I'll know more soon. His name's Mason Anderson."

"Are you serious?" Dean responded incredulously. "He's back at school?"

"Yeah," Remy replied. "Who is he?"

"They were kind of enemies their sophomore year…you know what, it doesn't matter. Just keep an eye on her okay? And on that douchebag, he's trouble waiting to happen."

"Why else would an angel be going to high school? For fun? You're an idiot, Winchester," Remy grunted angrily before hanging up.

Dean tossed his phone onto the table. "Why is everyone so goddamn annoying today?"

"What's up?" Sam asked, looking at him. "Who's back at school?"

"Mason," Dean replied, frustrated. "God forbid her transition back to school be even a little bit easy."

Sam gave a disbelieving look. "Are you kidding me?"

"Yeah, and I bet your ass he's already giving her a hard time," Dean grumbled. He stood motionless for a moment, and then he reached across the table and snatched Sam's laptop. "I'm gonna find this kid and put the freaking fear of God into him," he announced.

"No, Dean," Sam countered, grabbing his laptop and yanking it out of Dean's hands. "He's a kid."

"Does it look like I care?" Dean shot at him. "Soph's just a kid, too, but no one took that into account when they dragged her to Hell."

Sam shot Dean a look. "Before you do anything incredibly stupid, here's a thought—_talk to your daughter_."

"She doesn't want to talk, Sam!" Dean shot at him in annoyance.

"What teenager actually _wants _to talk to their parents about their feelings?" Sam countered. "I mean, we sure as hell never told Dad a damn thing about how we felt. And look how we turned out."

"Sexy as hell?" Dean tried.

Sam rolled his eyes. "We're seriously messed up, Dean. And if you're not careful, that's how Sophie'll end up, too."

Before Dean could reply, they heard Sophie's bedroom door open and the sound of her footsteps getting closer and closer. After a moment, she showed up in the main room, keys in her hand as she walked towards the garage.

"Hey," Dean started, "where are you going?"

She stopped and gave him a look. "Pole dancing class," she replied evenly.

"Excuse me?"

She shrugged. "You said you'd rather me be a stripper than a hunter," she remarked. "And I intend to be the best in my field. Dean Winchester didn't raise an underachiever."

Sam shoved his brother on the shoulder. "You told her she could be a stripper?" he snapped under his breath.

Dean ignored him. "Alright cut the bull, Soph, where are you _really _going?"

She rolled her eyes. "I'm meeting up with Jamie," she said. "I'm socializing with another human being and doing something other than cleaning the bunker. Happy?"

After carefully evaluating her and trying to see if she was lying, he finally nodded. "Fine. Let us know if you'll be back past nine or ten, okay?"

"Yeah," she said distractedly, glancing at her phone and then disappearing into the garage.

Once she was gone, Sam gave Dean a disbelieving look. "You told her she could be a _stripper_?"

"Heat of the moment, Sam, I didn't mean it," Dean snapped back at him. "I have no idea how to deal with her when she gets like this."

"Yeah, well, I don't know either," Sam admitted in an annoyed voice, "but I do know that the solution is _not _to encourage her to take off her clothes so middle-aged perverts will throw singles in her face!"

Dean looked offended. "Hey, my child is beautiful, they'd throw something a little more substantial than singles at her. And she said it herself, I didn't raise an underachiever."

"God, Dean, do you even listen to yourself sometimes?"

"Just drop it, Sam, she's not going to be a stripper _or _a hunter," Dean said confidently. "I don't care if I have to lock her in her room until she's an old woman, it's not happening."

"You can't control her, Dean," Sam said slowly. "She's not the little girl we found in North Carolina anymore."

Dean glared at Sam. "What the hell, Sam? You make it seem like you _want _her to be a hunter."

"You're a moron," Sam snapped back at him. "Of course I don't want her to be a hunter! That's the last thing I want her to be! But every time we push against that idea, she's just going to push back. We can't turn it into a huge deal."

"We wouldn't be turning it into a huge deal. It already _is _a huge deal," Dean grumbled, but he saw where Sam was coming from. "Whatever, fine. So what, we just pretend this problem doesn't exist?"

Sam shook his head. "We just give her a little bit of space to breathe," he said.

Dean nodded, and he took the moment to give _himself _a bit of space to breathe. He looked over at Sam after a few tense seconds of silence. "You know, for me being a single dad and you not being a parent at all, we're pretty good at co-parenting."

Sam snorted. "Okay, Dean."

"Seriously, though," Dean said, a little uncomfortably. "Thanks for talking me down. I just don't know what the hell to do here."

"Don't beat yourself up too much," Sam finally allowed. "To be fair, dealing with a seventeen-year-old girl is hard enough without adding the whole trauma of Hell into the mix."

Dean just nodded. "I guess." He was quiet for another moment. "Do you think she was really just joking about the whole pole dancing class thing? She's probably just meeting up with Jamie, right?"

Sam shrugged. "Probably." It was his turn to go quiet for a moment. "You know," he started slowly and hesitantly, "we could always check the GPS, if—"

He didn't even need to finish his sentence. Dean was checking.

**I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, and I hope you all had marvelous Christmases and holiday seasons! Until next week ~ Lacey :)**


	86. Chapter 86: The Beer Pong Queen

**Quick Note: For no other reason other than I felt a creative desire to do so, I changed the name of Sophie's new teacher from Cal Westbrook to Levi ****Derré. I don't know why, the name Westbrook wasn't sticking with me so I decided to find something different altogether. So I changed it in the last chapter and from hereon out just know that the teacher is now named Mr. Derré, or Mr. D.**

**Now back to our regular scheduled programming.**

_Chapter 86: The Beer Pong Queen_

Sophie loved her dad and Sam. And she loved that they wanted to help her, and that everything they did, they did because they believed it was in her best interest.

But she was going crazy, being around nobody but them. And she hadn't had quality time with Jamie in far too long. And if anyone could distract her from her thoughts of Hell with enough craziness, it was Jamie.

For some reason, Lebanon Central started the school year on a Friday. Sophie presumed it was their way of breaking students back into school slowly without overwhelming them with a whole week of school all at once. Either way, it meant that there were always parties being thrown to kick off the school year, and while none of them were as big or insane as the yearly Bash, some of them got a little bit wild.

Sophie had never gone before. But this year, she and Jamie were going to branch out.

She pulled into the Williams' driveway, feeling a wave of nostalgia hit her. Jamie had assured her that Jack was away from the house, hanging out with Harry at some sporting event that Sophie couldn't have cared less about. But still, it was weird to drive back to his house. She remembered sophomore year, coming over and hanging out with his family and building relationships with him and Jamie simultaneously.

That was all over now. Times were not as simple and innocent.

Sophie sighed and turned the car off before walking up to the front door and ringing the door bell.

Jamie showed up almost immediately, beaming when she saw Sophie. "Hey!" she said brightly. "Come in. No one's here so we have the whole place to ourselves."

"There's still five hours until the party," Sophie noted as she stepped inside. "And not that I don't love hanging out with you, but why the early SOS call?"

"Well," Jamie said, glancing around innocently. "I was thinking we could watch _Ferris Bueller's Day Off _and go over our summer reading assignment and talk about what happened between you and Jack and get ready for the party—"

"Woah, woah, woah," Sophie said, halting her in her tracks. Jamie gave her a bashful look. "We had a summer reading assignment?"

Jamie looked exasperated. "_That's_ what you got from that sentence?"

Sophie glared half-heartedly. "No, you want me to talk about what happened with Jack. But you're not exactly an objective third party here, Jamie, so I think you need to let this one go."

Jamie pouted, but she nodded. "If it was anyone other than Jack, I'd push harder," she assured Sophie. "But I get it, he's my twin. I can't exactly be a fair judge." Then her eyes widened. "You should talk to Harry about it!"

"Yeah, I don't think so," Sophie said. "Let's just go watch the movie, okay?"

Jamie sighed. "Fine, ice queen."

As they walked up the stairs towards Jamie's room, Sophie felt compelled to add, "Things between me and Jack will be awkward for a little bit. But…I really really care about him. I hope we can get to a point where it's not so…crappy."

"We will. Eventually. Probably," Jamie said, offering her a tiny smile. "But for now, let's just watch the movie."

Sophie grinned back. "Sounds good to me."

As they walked down the hall to Jamie's room, Sophie couldn't help but glance at Jack's door. That familiar guilty feeling bubbled in her stomach, but it wasn't just guilt. There was a desperation, too, and a fear.

She would barely admit the real reason why she'd broken up with Jack to herself, much less to him.

She passed by, shoving the feelings down. She wasn't here to stroll down memory lane. She was here to hang out with Jamie and have a few hours of normalcy, away from the bunker and away from the two most important people in her life that were basically smothering her.

They settled down in Jamie's room and watched the movie. A quarter of the way through they ordered pizza, and when it arrived they ate the entire box by themselves as they finished the movie. It was the most normal night Sophie had had in a long time.

Once the movie was over, Jamie hopped up and dusted her hands off. "Alright," she said. "Time to get ready for the party."

Sophie stood up warily. "Why do I feel like I'm going to be your dress-up doll again?"

Jamie smirked. "Because you know me far too well."

Sophie sighed and stood by helplessly as Jamie threw clothes from her closet at her at a rapid pace. Eventually, Sophie settled on a pair of white high-waisted shorts and a tight black tank top paired with some black strappy wedges, an outfit that felt just as foreign on her body as she imagined a clown suit would.

Jamie strutted out of her closet wearing a tiny, vampy red romper, and when she saw Sophie she grinned. "Someone looks _hot_," she practically sang.

"You're the one wearing red," Sophie mumbled, tugging at her shorts.

"Oh, come on, Sophie, just accept a compliment every once in a while," Jamie said, grinning at her friend. "You look great, alright? We both do."

Sophie glanced at the clock on Jamie's wall. "The party started thirty minutes ago," she noted.

Jamie nodded. "No respectable person shows up at a party when it's supposed to start," she told Sophie. "We'll head there now and get there right as it's getting good."

Sophie nodded, glancing at her phone. It was nine thirty, and she knew that Dean was probably expecting her home soon. "Yeah, let me just talk to my dad. I think I'm going to tell him I'm spending the night here."

Jamie shrugged. "Works for me. I'll go start the car, come down whenever you're done."

Sophie nodded, and as Jamie sauntered out the door she dialed Dean's number and lifted the phone to her ear.

Her dad answered after one ring. "Hey, Soph, what's up?" he asked.

"I'm spending the night at Jamie's," she said quickly.

Dean was quiet for a moment. "Sophie, I don't know—"

"Dad, look, I'm seventeen, okay? It's my last year of high school. I'm safe and cloaked and you guys can find me if anything happens. I need to have time with my friends."

She heard Sam mumbling in the background, and the Dean finally said, "Okay. Fine. But get home at a decent hour tomorrow, okay? Or we're sending the cavalry."

"Sure," she said. "Goodnight."

Without waiting for a reply, she hung up, tucked her phone in her pocket, and made her way down to Jamie's car.

* * *

Thirty minutes later, they were pulling up at Heath Milton's house. His parents were out of town for the weekend for a wedding, so he'd volunteered his house for a senior year kickoff party. Seeing as he was the son of an attorney and one of Lebanon's two dentists, his house was large and perfect for collecting all of the seniors and forcing them together in a dimly lit, booze-filled environment.

Jamie parked the car and looked over at Sophie. "Let's just agree that both of us aren't going to be designated drivers," she said. "I know Millie Goldstein doesn't drink, and she'd be more than willing to give us a lift anywhere."

Sophie didn't even hesitate. "Good. I could really use a drink."

Jamie grinned. "Finally! Sophie Winchester is going to bust out of that shell of hers."

Sophie just smirked, and they both got out of the car and made their way up to Heath's house, and with each step they could hear the music pounding louder and louder.

The front door opened just as they walked up to it, and Heath Milton poked his head out, beaming at them in his perpetually friendly way. "Hey Jamie, hey Sophie!" he said cheerily, and Sophie got the feeling the beer in his hand was definitely not his first, or his second. "Welcome to senior year!"

Jamie offered a cheer as she walked through the door, pulling Sophie through the threshold. Once the door closed, Sophie was immediately greeted by hot, body-filled air and the sound of teenagers yelling and drinking and doing all kinds of less than legal activities. Sophie watched the quarterback of the football team making out with his girlfriend on a loveseat in the kitchen, half the drama club playing beer pong in a hastily made setup in one of the hallways, and the tiniest girl in school shotgunning a beer in the middle of a throng of guys as if her life depended on it.

Sophie was beginning to remember why she didn't really go to parties.

Before she could turn to Jamie and tell her that she was starting to rethink her decision, she felt a cool drink being shoved into her hand. Sophie looked up to see Jamie grinning at her with a silly look on her face. "What is this?" Sophie asked, sniffing the drink suspiciously and coming away with an overwhelming sense that she'd just been hit in the face by a cloud of cinnamon.

"Redd's and Fireball," Jamie said. "C'mon, just try it."

Sophie obliged, taking a sip and immediately reeling back. "Woah," she said, squinting her eyes shut tight. "It's…so sweet. Wow. Ew."

Jamie rolled her eyes. "It gets better as you keep drinking, I promise," she said.

"Isn't that true of all alcohol?" Sophie questioned. Jamie pretended not to hear her, instead dragging her further into the party.

Jamie had been right, of course. The more Sophie sipped on her drink, the better it tasted to her. She couldn't help but think about Dean, and how he'd probably be more upset with her flavorful drink of choice than with her actual underage drinking. Either way, he would definitely not approve of her lying to him _again _about going to a party. Especially after how the last time ended.

As if someone had read her mind, right when Jamie went to go join a game of flip cup that was starting, Sophie felt a presence behind her that made her turn around. And when she did, she scowled. "I didn't think dumb high school parties were your scene," she said.

Remy looked down at her with eyes that looked a little more gray than green. "I could say the same to you," he said in a low voice. "Especially when your father thinks you're at Jamie's house."

Sophie shrugged. "What he doesn't know won't hurt him," she said, managing to down a couple large gulps of her drink without wincing at the taste.

Remy watched her apprehensively. "What are you doing?" he asked her in a voice that she could only describe as sad. "This isn't you, Ace."

She took another drink, starting to feel the airiness that came with alcohol running through your bloodstream. She'd always been a light weight. "This _is _me. And I'm dealing with my problems just like my dad would," she said with a humorless grin. "Now move over, I'm going to go play flip cup with Jamie."

Remy looked at her reproachfully. "Sophie, c'mon."

"Look, do whatever you're going to do," she said emotionlessly, staring at him in the eye. "Tattle on me to my dad, poof me out of here, mess with my mind to make me leave, whatever. Just do it now. But if you're not going to do anything, then let me go play some freaking flip cup."

When Remy just looked at her in surprise, she shook her head, swallowed the rest of her drink, and pushed past him and made her way over to the flip cup game. When she nudged Jamie and told her she wanted to join, the whole table cheered and made room for her.

And so Sophie spent the night drinking and laughing and doing anything and everything to simply…forget. Over the course of the next couple hours, Sophie got more drunk than she ever had in her life. She won nearly every drinking game that she played, which she figured was just proof of her Winchester DNA, and she didn't stop. Even when Jamie cut herself off and Remy was starting to hover nearby far more than Sophie liked, she kept drinking.

After she'd won her third game of beer pong, she felt someone tap her shoulder. When she turned around and saw who it was, she smirked. "Mason Anderson," she slurred, grinning up at the dark-haired, smooth-smiling boy. "Come to try and fail to dethrone the beer pong queen?"

Mason looked a little bit surprised to see Sophie drunk and rowdy, but for the most part he just looked enticed. "No one's ever beaten me at beer pong, Winchester," he told her confidently. "Especially not some ninety-pound redhead that spends more times kissing teachers' asses at school than kissing much anything or anyone else."

Sophie crossed her arms, his words swimming in her mind. "I think you're underestimating me again, Mason. Have you already repressed the traumatic memory of me breaking your nose sophomore year?"

Mason's eyes lit up with her challenge. "Play me, then. Loser has to do a dare of the winner's choosing."

At that moment, she felt Jamie's hand on her elbow. "Sophie," Jamie said under her breath, looking at her friend in concern. "I think you've had enough, why don't you just—"

"Game on," Sophie said, cutting Jamie off and tugging her elbow away.

Jamie stepped back, looking hurt, and Sophie ignored her. They set up a new game, and assumed their positions on either side of the table. "Ladies first," Mason said, grinning at her.

She tossed the first ping pong ball and it landed effortlessly in one of the sloshing beers. Mason just chuckled and knocked it back easily. "Good form, Winchester, I'll give you that."

Then he proceeded to toss a ball straight into one of her cups. Sophie just smirked.

The game went on, and Sophie and Mason were a pretty even match. Sophie knew that win or lose, this game was going to make her so drunk she wasn't even going to be able to walk straight.

Finally, they were down to the final cup for each, and it was Sophie's turn. She took aim, but her vision was beginning to get pretty shaky, and she missed the cup by about a centimeter.

Mason smirked, and in the next moment, he sunk his ball into her last drink.

He cheered, as did the crowd of people who'd started congregating by the game to see how it would end, and she sighed, reluctantly grabbing the drink and finishing it off. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jamie looking over at her disapprovingly and Remy not far from her, wearing a similar displeased expression. She ignored them both, looking over at Mason, who was still gloating.

"Alright, hotshot," she said, aware that her syllables were all jumbled together at this point. "Fair is fair. What're you gonna dare me to do?"

Mason walked up to her, locking eyes with her as the corner of his mouth twitched upwards. "Kiss me," he said. "And make me believe you mean it."

Sophie could hear Jamie's scoff of distaste and surprised indignation behind her, and she could practically _feel _the waves of disgust rolling off of Remy, but before either of them could do anything, she reached up and locked her arms around Mason's neck.

Winchesters didn't back down from dares.

He didn't even bother waiting for her to fulfill her challenge. He leaned down and crashed his lips onto hers, and she didn't cringe away from him, even though that would have been her natural sober reaction. Instead, she pulled him closer to her, until his body was flush against hers. Her head was clouded and spinning as her lips moved against his and as he stepped forward, roughly pushing her backwards until her back hit a wall.

He didn't waste time in slipping his hands underneath her shirt, and she let him, tightening her arms around his neck and deepening their alcohol-fueled kiss. One of his hands left her skin to reach for a doorknob behind her, and soon they were stumbling into a bathroom and slamming the door shut.

Without preamble, Mason put his hands on her waist and lifted her up so that she was sitting on the edge of the sink. She let out a little yelp of surprise, as she'd almost forgotten how strong Mason was and how much more muscular he'd gotten since sophomore year, but it was soon silenced by his lips descending upon hers once again. The kiss deepened further as his hands slid up Sophie's tank top and covered her bra, and she wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him closer to her, his hands on her body the only thing making sense in her hazy mind.

After a minute of him exploring her skin with his fingers, his hands slipped out from under her shirt and promptly removed her tank top from her body with frightening ease. Immediately she felt the icy cold tiles of the bathroom wall against her hot skin, but even the shock of that did nothing to pull her out of her drunken state. Her hands clumsily fought with Mason's shirt until it was finally off of his body, and they came back together, skin on skin, lips on lips, hands fighting for the most surface area on the other's body.

_This isn't you, Ace_.

In the tiniest corner in the back of Sophie's mind, she knew this wasn't her. She knew that this was alcohol in conjunction with an overpowering desire to forget, to do whatever it took to get her mind off of the evils of the world. The evils of what had been done to her. In her mind it was her way to take control, to fight back.

But that part of her brain was overshadowed by her body's physical reaction to what Mason was doing to her, and what she was doing to him, and before she knew it he was unbuttoning her shorts and lowering the straps on her bra as his lips found their way down her throat and towards her neck and shoulders.

And then, suddenly, Mason was ripped off of her and slung into the opposite wall of the bathroom. Before Sophie could do anything, she saw with blurry vision that Remy was standing a foot away from her, furious. Mason stumbled up onto his feet. "What the h—"

He didn't even finish his sentence before Remy put two fingers to his forehead and knocked him unconscious.

Sophie slid off the bathroom counter and as soon as she hit the floor, stumbled sideways into a wall. "What the hell, Remy?" she yelled. "Why did you do that?"

Remy was so angry he couldn't even put words together. Instead, he just took a big step forward so that he was right in front of Sophie and roughly yanked her forward by her shorts. She started yelling at him before realizing he was furiously buttoning her shorts back up, and even then she weakly tried to push him away by placing both her hands on his chest and shoving with all her might. But the angel didn't budge.

"Where's your damn shirt?" he muttered as he distractedly pulled her bra straps back onto her shoulders, looking around for her tank top. Unfortunately, when Mason had tossed it, it'd landed straight into the toilet bowl, and Remy just scowled. "Screw it," he said, and he reached forward and grabbed Sophie's arm.

"What the hell are you doing?" she slurred at him.

"Sorry, Ace," he said, not sounding sorry at all, and then the bathroom around her disappeared and within seconds, she was standing in the middle of the bunker, shirtless, drunk, and pissed.

* * *

"You son of a bitch!" Sophie yelled at Remy. "You can't just drag me away anytime you disagree with my life choices!"

Remy glared at her. "You're so drunk that you were about to have sex with the person you hate the most!" he roared at her. "In a stranger's goddamn _bathroom_!"

"I wasn't going to sleep with him!" she screamed. "We were just making out!"

"He had his hands…_everywhere_, Sophie!" he yelled. "You didn't even _notice_!"

"What the hell is going on?" a voice boomed angrily.

Sophie and Remy turned to see Sam and Dean standing in the threshold of the main room, both wearing the clothes they usually slept in and looking like they'd just been jarred out of sleep. But when Dean's eyes fell on Sophie, who was standing in nothing but a bra and some shorts, any trace of exhaustion was gone and replaced by fury. "Where the _hell _is your shirt?" Then he looked at Remy, seemed to connect dots in his mind, and gave the angel a look that would've killed the angel if looks had the capability to murder. "You son of a bitch, I'll kill you."

Before she could try to come up with an excuse, and before Dean could launch himself forward to throttle her guardian, Remy looked at him and said, "If you want to know what _really_ happened to her shirt, why don't you ask Mason Anderson?"

Dean's wide eyes narrowed, and he looked over at Sam, who just looked shocked. "I'm going to murder him," he said, jaw tense and eyes hard. "He's dead. And this time, I mean it. I'll kill him."

"Jesus, Dad, turn it down a notch," Sophie grumbled, taking a step away from Remy and subsequently swaying on the spot before stumbling over until she grabbed onto the corner of one of the bookshelves for support.

Dean looked at her in utter surprise. "Are you… _drunk_?"

In response, Sophie just let go of the corner, groaned, and then fell to her knees and puked behind the bookshelf.

Sam jolted to action, shrugging out of the zip-up he'd been wearing and rushing over to Sophie, draping it over her shoulders and holding her hair back as he lifted his head and gave Dean an annoyed look. "God, Dean, don't just stand there, go grab a garbage can!"

Dean looked at Remy. "You. Come with me."

Remy silently nodded and followed Dean into the kitchen. Once they were out of the main room, Dean whirled on Remy. "Talk," he said dangerously, eyes dark with fury and concern.

"She went to a party with Jamie, got more drunk than anyone else there, and lost a game of beer pong to Mason," Remy said quickly, knowing that trying to tiptoe around the truth wasn't going to work with Dean Winchester. "His reward was for her to kiss him, but then it went…farther."

Dean reached underneath the sink and yanked a small garbage can out from the space with such irate ferocity that a variety of things fell out with it. He glared at Remy as he kicked the fallen items back under into the cupboard. "How far?" he snarled through gritted teeth.

Remy shook his head. "Far enough that I can't decide whether I hope she forgets it all in the morning or remembers how big of an idiot she was." When Dean looked like he was about to explode, Remy added, "They didn't have sex, if that's what you're asking. I broke it up when he got her out of her shirt." _For the most part_, he thought, but he didn't add that.

Dean angrily put a new garbage bag inside of the bin. "And you didn't think to stop her before it got that far?" he snapped.

"I should've, but I was mad at her and I thought she'd just kiss him and be done with it," Remy said, and for the first time Dean could see the fragments of hurt in his eyes. He'd almost forgotten how much the angel cared for his daughter. "But that's not how it went down."

"Do you even see her out there?" Dean practically hissed at him. "She is drunk off her ass. She probably couldn't have told Mason to screw off even if she'd tried. I know you…_care_ about her and seeing her with that douchebag probably pissed you off, but you're not the one who gets to decide how to teach her a lesson, got it? Especially when all of this…_all _of this…is just her trying to figure out how to deal with Hell."

Without waiting for Remy to respond, Dean pushed angrily past the angel and made his way back out to the main room, where Sam was still hovering over the tiny form of Sophie.

He bent down on the other side of her, silently handing her the trashcan, which she shakily grabbed and ducked her head into before retching again. He met Sam's gaze over the top of her head and just stared.

So much for progress.

* * *

When Sophie woke up the next morning, she could safely say that she was experiencing the worst hangover of her life.

She felt like someone was consistently stabbing at her brain with a dull knife, and every time she moved even the slightest bit in her bed the pain only got worse. There was the most disgusting taste in her mouth, and when she finally mustered up the willpower to open her eyes, she saw that she was still wearing the shorts from last night as well as Sam's zip-up.

She tried to remember everything that happened the night before, but only came up with flashes. Bueller, booze, bathroom. For some reason, that was all that she could conjure up.

Bueller, booze, bathroom.

Other than that, she couldn't remember a thing.

With a huge exertion of willpower, she forced herself up out of bed and stumbled her way into the bathroom, where she immediately stripped off her clothes and stepped into the shower. She made it quick and then stepped out, wrapping a towel around her body and grabbing her toothbrush. She must've brushed her teeth for five minutes, making sure she got every bit of that horrible taste out of her mouth, and then when she was done she walked out of the bathroom and into her closet. She pulled on jeans and a faded red T-shirt before combing out her wet hair and finally walking out of her room.

Making as little noise as possible, she crept into the kitchen and poured herself a large cup of coffee, which she used to down three painkillers, doubtful that they'd do much to help.

"How're you feeling?"

She jumped, spilling some of the coffee as she looked up to see Sam standing in the doorway. She couldn't help but look back down, unable to look him in the eye. "Okay," she mumbled.

Sam was quiet for a moment. Then, "Last night—"

"I don't remember anything," she said bitterly. "I just know that I have two hickeys on my neck and I hate myself."

He looked at her sadly. "You don't remember _anything_?"

Sophie finally looked up at him. "Would I even _want _to?" she asked in a broken voice.

"No," another voice said, and Sophie couldn't help but blush as Dean walked into the room, looking at her just as carefully as Sam had been. She hoped beyond hope that he hadn't heard her hickey comment. "No, but honestly, you should know. So that you know why doing what you did was just plain—"

"Unhealthy," Sam finished for him, euphemizing whatever Dean was surely about to say.

Sophie just stood there silently, taking a quick drink of coffee before finally making eye contact with her dad. "Say what you want," she finally said. "Last night was the first time I didn't have nightmares in almost a month."

Dean looked exasperated. "That's because you made your _reality _a nightmare, Soph," he tried to explain. "You hooked up with _Mason_."

Sophie blanched, suddenly feeling incredibly sick to her stomach, and not just because of the hangover. "I...I actually _slept with_—"

"No," Sam assured her quickly upon seeing her horrified expression. "You didn't."

"But according to Remy, you were headed in that direction," Dean continued.

Sophie felt even more nauseous. "Remy was there?"

Dean nodded, mouth pressed into a hard line. "He brought you back here. Soph, what were you thinking?"

She closed her eyes, her eyebrows knitting together as her headache seemed to increase tenfold. She pinched the bridge of her nose in an effort to decrease the pain, but it didn't do much. "I don't know, Dad," she said, trying to conjure up memories from the night before but drawing a complete blank. "I was thinking that my life just really blows right now, and I wanted to forget about it, and it was either drink a bunch of alcohol or undergo electroshock therapy or something, and I figured drinking was the more enjoyable of the two."

Dean crossed his arms. "Yeah, I bet it's really _enjoyable _to know that you were one wine cooler away from banging the kid who made your life hell sophomore year!"

"Dean!" Sam snapped.

But the damage was done. Tears filled up Sophie's eyes, and immediately she tried to wipe them away, ashamed at how quickly her emotions caught up with her.

Immediately, Dean felt horrible. "Soph, I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"

"No," she said, setting her coffee cup down. "You meant it. I'm actually _so _happy that I let myself drink so much that I let that tool shove his tongue down my throat. One of the highlights of my year, right behind that time that I died and went to Hell. Let's put that in the family Christmas card this year, shall we?"

She turned on her heel and hurried out of the kitchen. "Sophie!" Dean called after her, but she'd already retreated into her room and shut the door tightly.

She wiped her tears away. Crying was pointless. Even if Dean had said it the wrong way, it didn't make what he said any less true—she'd been stupid. Not that there was anything inherently wrong about having a night out and hooking up with someone. It just wasn't Sophie. And it surely wasn't something she did with her best intentions.

She sat down on her bed and looked up into the empty room. Without overthinking it, she called out, "Remy?"

Immediately, the almost comforting sound of fluttering wings filled her ears, and then Remy was standing in front of her, looking at her carefully. "Hey, Ace," he said.

She looked up at him and just shook her head. "I just wanted to say thank you," she said quickly. "For pulling me off Mason yesterday. I wasn't...myself."

Remy snorted, and she looked up and was surprised to see a look of genuine self-loathing on his face. "First of all, I pulled _him _off of _you_. And Soph, don't thank me. I let you go into the bathroom with him, thinking that maybe you'd…maybe you'd come to your senses and see on your own that you didn't want to be with him." He shook his head. "It was stupid of me. I realize now that you were so intoxicated that you weren't…weren't making rational decisions. I should've pulled him off of you the moment he touched you. Or the moment you touched him. Either way, I should've done it earlier."

She looked at him in confusion. "You thought… that I actually wanted to _be with _him?" she asked in astonishment.

Remy stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Look, Ace, you might forget sometimes, but I'm an angel. Although I'm a little better than many of my fellow angels, my understanding of the intricacies of human body language is…limited. From what I know, getting incredibly physical with another human means you want to be with them."

Sophie couldn't help but smirk. "It usually means that," she informed him. "Just not when you're so drunk you're seeing quadruple."

Remy cracked a grin. "As you humans love to say, you learn something new every day."

She folded her legs underneath her. "Since we're actually talking now, I'm sorry for avoiding you, I guess. And for being a bitch to you at school."

Remy gave a little chuckle and sat down next to Sophie on the bed. "Don't worry about it. After everything you've dealt with recently, I think I can forgive you one little yelling match." He reconsidered. "Well, more than one. You screamed your lungs out at me last night. I'm surprised you can even talk right now."

"Yeah, don't remember that," Sophie said. Then she sighed.

Remy picked up on it. "What?"

She leaned back onto her bed, staring at the ceiling. "I don't know. I just…. Okay, you can't judge me, okay?"

"Me? Judgmental? Never."

Sophie rolled her eyes. "Well…I know that everything I did last night was beyond stupid. I made out with Mason in front of half the seniors, I drank so much I _still_ feel constantly on the brink of throwing up, and I probably destroyed the one other friendship I had left in Jamie. But…Remy, I _slept _last night. No nightmares, no waking up screaming. Just…nothingness. And honestly…even though I know it's crazy, I'd probably do it again just to get another few hours of rest."

Remy looked at her sadly, green-grey eyes practically flickering. "It's the most temporary of fixes you could possibly pursue, Sophie," he said quietly. "And in the long run, it'll just make it worse."

"I don't care about the long run," she replied honestly. "I know I should, but…how am I supposed to care about the long run if every single day is like a freaking battle to get through?"

Remy shrugged. "Think about the people who love you. Think about everything that you stand to gain from beating this."

Sophie sighed and shook her head. "I know."

Remy narrowed his eyes. "Why do I get the feeling that you know, but you don't care?"

"I care, Remy," she told him. "I think that's the problem. I know, I care, and yet…." She sighed, and then she lifted herself up off the bed and reached across Remy to fumble around in her nightstand drawer before leaning back up, a bottle of sleeping pills in her hands. "These didn't do a damn thing," she said softly. "I took way higher of a dosage than I was supposed to—nothing dangerous, but still too much—and nothing happened. But a little bit of drinking, a little bit of acting stupid…and I was sleeping like a baby."

Remy shook his head and yanked the sleeping pills out of her hand. "I don't care if I have to come down here and personally lull you to sleep for the rest of our lives, you're not resorting to reckless, stupid behavior just to get some shut eye."

Sophie looked at him in surprise. "But you don't actually mean that," she said.

Remy looked at her. "Of course I mean that, you idiot. Ace, I'd do anything for you. Not just because I'm your guardian angel, connected souls or not. Just…because."

Sophie turned to look at him, and she wasn't sure what drove her to say what she said next. Maybe she just had a bigger appreciation for life and the fact that it could be taken away in a moment. Or maybe she was still drunk. Either way, she said it. "You'll do anything, but you won't kiss me."

Immediately, Remy's eyes grew a little harder, and he pulled himself up, looking significantly less open. "I won't," he agreed.

Sophie didn't react, and she didn't even feel rejected. She'd come to expect emotional distance from everyone in her life, including Remy. Instead, she just placed her hands on her knees and glanced at him. "Why?" she asked, curious.

"Look in the mirror, Sophie," he said, and for a second, she felt her stomach drop. Was he really going to take shots at her _looks_? It was juvenile, even for him. But then he continued. "You're a mess right now. The smallest thing could break you apart. Hell, last night, you practically broke yourself apart on your own. I'm not going to complicate the tornado of crap you have to sort through in your mind." Then he sighed. "Besides. The fact remains, you're a human and I'm an angel. That will never change."

Sophie looked at him with narrowed eyes. "Really? The whole 'we come from two different worlds' trope? That's pretty unoriginal, Remy, give me a break."

"It's not a _trope_, Ace, it's the truth," Remy said slowly.

"What about the truth about how you _feel_?" she challenged.

Remy just stared at her, and she saw torment deep within his eyes. "How I feel is irrelevant," he finally said. "You don't need any more complications in your life. And I refuse to be just another problem for you to figure out."

Before she could argue any further, there came a knock at her door. "Sophie?" she heard her dad call out. "Soph, can we talk?"

She looked over at Remy to tell him they weren't done with this conversation, but he'd already disappeared.

She leaned back on her bed. "No," she yelled to her dad.

As she expected, her door opened anyway. He closed the door and made his way over to her, grabbing her desk chair and dragging it over to sit on. "Too bad," he said, slinging his legs over the chair so that he could cross his arms over the back and look at her sternly. "We're going to talk."

"Dad, every time I talk to you, we go one step forward and two steps back. Why don't we just cut our losses?"

He gave her a somewhat hurt look. "I'm trying, Soph," he finally said. "I'm really, really trying here."

She nodded. "Believe it or not," she said in a quiet voice, "I'm trying, too."

Dean stared at her for a long, tense moment. "I shouldn't have said what I said back in the kitchen," he told her. "I wasn't thinking."

She shrugged. "It was the truth," she admitted.

"Doesn't matter. You're the one who's supposed to lose their temper and say stupid things they regret, not me," Dean said. "I'm…I'm slowly learning how to be more…sensitive."

At that, Sophie couldn't help but snort. "_Very _slowly," she said with a small grin. "Almost glacially."

He smirked back at her. "Alright, smartass, the point is, I'm trying. It's just hard seeing you like you were last night and not knowing what to say or do about it."

Sophie looked down at her hands. "I'm sorry for freaking you guys out," she finally said. "I just…I don't know, one drink turned into two which turned into a lot and then suddenly…I wasn't thinking about Hell anymore."

Dean looked at her closely. "Take it from someone who's been there, Soph," he said. "Don't do it. Don't go down that path. It might make it better in the short run, but long run… it's infinitely worse."

If she had a dime for every time she heard a different rendition of the same piece of advice... "Dad—"

"Don't do it," he said, looking at her dead in the eye.

She sighed.

He continued to look at her with an even gaze, and after a while she couldn't hold his stare. She looked back at her hands.

"Sophie," he started again, tentatively, "if you don't talk to someone—anyone—about what went on when you were downstairs, it's going to eat you alive. And I'm gonna lose you." _Again_. The unsaid word hung in the air between them.

"I can't," she mumbled.

"Anyone," Dean continued. "It doesn't have to be me, or Sam. It can be Remy, Jack, Cas…hell, we can even call up Charlie and see if she's up for it, I know she would be—"

"No," Sophie snapped. "Dad, just stop, I'm not talking about it. Not now, not ever."

Dean just stared at her helplessly. He was out of ways to help her. He was out of ideas. And he was completely powerless as she spiraled out of control, and that undeniable fact was almost as scary as her dying again.

"Soph," he tried again, in a softer voice, suddenly struck with the realization that ever since she'd come back to life, he'd slowly been losing her all over again.

"No."

* * *

Monday, after another crappy day at school in which even Jamie refused to speak to her, Sophie was walking back to her car with her increasingly usual terrible mood when a familiar voice piped up from behind her.

"I'm a little disappointed we never got to finish what we started on Friday."

Sophie turned, glowering at the inevitable form of Mason, who was leaning against the car next to hers and grinning at her in amusement. Judging by the brown paper bag in his hand, he was just about as sober then as he'd been back at the party.

"I'm not," Sophie grumbled in reply. "So leave me alone."

"Hey," he said, standing up straight. "I wasn't suggesting we should _actually _finish what we started. In the moment it might've been hot, but let's be honest, Winchester, you're about as experienced as a cloistered nun. And I usually like 'em seasoned."

She made a disgusted face. "You're seventeen, Mason, you can only be so well-traveled."

"Age is but a number," he told her with a wink.

She rolled her eyes. "Well, whatever. Either way, glad we can at least agree that last Friday was a huge freaking mistake and we should never go back there again."

"Cheers to that," Mason laughed, taking a gulp from the bottle Sophie had rightly assumed was hidden in his bag. "Now we can go back to living our miserable lives of hating each other. It'll be fun."

For some reason, she stopped before unlocking her car. "What's in the bag?" she found herself asking.

"This?" Mason asked, gesturing towards the bottle. "I don't know, some cheap-ass vodka I swiped from my dad's office. He's got more than enough to share, if you care to commiserate with me."

Sophie glanced at it, and then she thought back to Friday night. She regretted pretty much all of it. The making out with Mason in front of Jamie and Remy, effectively screwing up both of their friendships, the puking in front of Sam and her dad.

But she couldn't bring herself to regret the drinking. Essentially knocking herself out with alcohol had been all it took to keep the nightmares at bay. So simple. So easy. So immediate.

That's all she wanted. Simple. Easy. Immediate.

And so she looked up at Mason with steely eyes as she felt the very last piece of her resolve crumble.

"Hand it over."

**Looks like a rough road ahead for poor Sophie.**

**In other news, Happy 2016! Thanks for sticking around with me for another year! Here's to a year of good stories and hot Winchesters!**

**~ Lacey :)**


	87. Chapter 87: Whiskey, Not Cyanide

_Chapter 87: Whiskey, Not Cyanide_

Sophie was sitting in the parking lot of Lebanon Central, sharing a very cheap bottle of whiskey with Mason Anderson.

A lot had changed in the past several weeks since the party with Mason, since she'd accepted that first offering of vodka from her ex-worst enemy.

For starters, Sophie couldn't remember the last consecutive twenty-four hours she'd made it through completely sober.

Every day after school, she and Mason drank in the parking lot and then waited an hour or two for the buzz to die down before they drove home. At home, when Sam and Dean were there, Sophie behaved as normally as possible. She did her homework, albeit sloppily, to appease Sam, made minimal small talk, ate dinner.

Then at night, before she went to bed, she'd drink a quarter of a bottle of whatever alcohol Mason had been able to get a hold of that day—usually vodka or whiskey, but it varied day to day—before she finally fell into a crappy, restless, yet most often dreamless sleep.

She became good at hiding her drunkenness and her hangovers. It was easier than she thought it'd be. A little bit of extra makeup here, an extra spray of body splash there. Breath mints, eyes drops, water bottles, sunglasses. Lots of coffee to try and cover for the fact that even though she slept through the night, she always woke up exhausted.

She was always tired now. She felt like she hadn't truly slept in eons.

She wasn't the perfect con artist. Sam and Dean were quite aware that she was spiraling. She never spoke about anything important anymore. Every word that came out of her mouth was about all the banalities of life—school, the weather, what movies she and Cas had watched the last time Sam and Dean went on a hunt, since they had finally, and perhaps erringly, decided she was safe and sane enough to be left alone with herself.

Sam and Dean weren't completely oblivious to her drinking problem. One night, when she didn't drink quite enough to knock herself out and the nightmares reemerged, they came back with grueling force, worse than ever before. Her screams woke up her dad and uncle and sent them running to her room, where they saw her thrashing around in her sleep as a half empty bottle of Jack sat forlornly on the floor beside her bed.

When she woke up the next morning, they informed her that they emptied the bunker of alcohol and that she could never do that again. She just nodded, apologized, promised to never do it again, and continued to do so anyway. She was just more careful.

They didn't know how bad it was. They didn't know that she drank with Mason, that she drank every single day, multiple times a day. They didn't know that when they were out of town on hunts, she would stay in the parking lot with Mason until nightfall, would occasionally sleep in her car if she was too drunk to get herself home.

They didn't know that alcohol was the one thing both keeping her from being driven to insanity from her nightmares while also being the one thing leading her farther and farther away from recovery.

Perhaps they didn't _want _to know.

All they knew was that things were not getting better.

Her grades nosedived. Her friendship with Jamie, which had been at least salvageable at the beginning of the year, was dashed to pieces after the night of the party and Sophie's subsequent decline into alcoholism. She avoided Jack like the plague, knowing he had to know about her moment with Mason at the party and not wanting to confront him about it.

And as for throwing off her increasingly least favorite angel pal...that was harder.

She tried to throw Remy the same cold shoulder that she'd given to everyone else, even though he still made sure he kept an eye on her. Her ex-guardian angel likely knew better than Sam or Dean how bad she was getting, but she refused to talk to him about it. Even when Remy cornered her, surprising her in the hallway or in her car or in her room, she just gave him the silent treatment until finally he had no choice but leave and try again another day.

Some nights he'd fly down and knock her out with his grace in an effort to keep her from drinking. And it would work for a few hours. But then she'd still get nightmares and wake up in the middle of the night, and the only thing that would get her back to sleep was a couple drinks.

Even angels couldn't help someone who took every step to _refuse_ help.

All Remy or anyone else could do was watch Sophie sink down a dark hole fast, with little promise of returning.

And somehow, falling down that dark hole had led her to Mason.

Mason had become her…friend. Her friend that procured alcohol for her and spent afternoons in the front seat of his car with her.

Their friendship had been entirely platonic ever since that night at the party. She could not have been less attracted to Mason, especially after a month of hearing his drunken retellings of his sexual escapades from boarding school. And he didn't seem particularly interested in hooking up with her either, although Sophie was sure if she gave him the green light he wouldn't hesitate. He seemed content to have a drinking buddy, one who didn't mind listening to his ramblings about his crappy family, his crappy future, and his generally crappy life.

Sophie never spoke much. She mainly drank and listened. She was good at listening and terrible at talking. It was the whole reason she'd even been driven to drink in the first place. She couldn't talk about Hell, so she just ingested so much alcohol that she temporarily forgot about it.

Talking to Mason reminded her that even though she'd gone to Hell and experienced pretty much the worst pain ever, people still had real problems. People on earth still had it rough.

In fact, for someone who she used to hate so much, Mason reminded her a lot of herself. Or, at least, he reminded her of the Sophie she'd been when she lived with Steve. His parents pretty much despised him since he was the delinquent youngest child in a family of five boys. All of his older brothers were smart and successful, and Mason had never quite fit that same mold. Which made his family life his own hell.

Mason was talking about it now as they sat in the car, reclined and passing a fifth of whiskey back and forth. "So my dad said, 'If you don't get into UVA, you might as well just go to trade school and become a plumber or something dumb like that.' And I said back to him, 'Well, Daddio, I'll just be the best damn plumber this world's ever seen.'"

Sophie nodded at his words, taking another small sip of whiskey, not wanting to drink so much she wouldn't be able to drive home in an hour, and looking over at him in amusement. "Consider yourself lucky. My dad would be fine with me being anything except for the one thing I want to be."

"And what's that?" Mason asked.

"Stripper," Sophie lied offhandedly.

Mason snorted, knowing she was lying but not bothering to interrogate her as he snagged the bottle from her hands and took a swig. "I'd pay some good money to see Sophie Winchester, star student of Lebanon Central and professional prude, taking it all off for desperate, horny strangers."

"That's because you're disgusting," Sophie responded.

"Guilty as charged."

"Seriously though, Mason, screw your dad. You do whatever you want to do, and you dont have to go to UVA to do it."

Mason looked over at her. "And what about you?" he asked. "I'd really hate for anything to stand in the way of you and your dreams. Especially if those dreams involve you twirling around naked in front of the entire world."

"Did I mention you're disgusting?"

Mason smirked, taking another drink. "You might've."

Sophie leaned back in her seat, stealing the bottle of whiskey back from Mason and taking another sip. A month ago, she might've winced as the alcohol burned its way down her throat. Now it went down as smoothly as water.

He looked over at her. "It's good we don't hook up," he told her in a matter-of-fact voice. "I like having you to vent to without worrying if you'll be here tomorrow or not."

Sophie met his gaze and grinned. "It's good we don't hook up because I kind of find you to be a generally awful human being, and if I ever got as drunk as I'd need to be to sleep with you, I'd probably die from alcohol poisoning before actually doing to deed."

He chuckled. "You're breaking my heart, Winchester."

"Get in line," she grumbled, taking another swig of whiskey. "Apparently you're not the only one."

"What, bookworm still isn't over you? It's been forever."

Sophie shrugged. "I wouldn't really know. He just keeps trying to talk to me and I keep avoiding him."

Mason just snorted and shook his head. "Dude needs to get laid. Release all that pent up energy."

Sophie glared at Mason. "He doesn't need to get laid, he needs to just move on."

"That's basically exactly what I just said."

She rolled her eyes. "You just think sex is the answer to every problem."

"That's because sex _is _the answer to every problem," he said, looking at her in amusement. "You have so much to learn, my naive and prudish companion."

"You sound like my dad," Sophie muttered.

Mason lifted an eyebrow. "You often talk to your dad about casual sex?"

Sophie snorted, sipping on the whiskey. "Not really. But it's sort of a big part of his personality. And a significant contributing factor to my existence."

"I'd probably like your dad, then, if I ever met him," Mason said.

"If you ever met my dad, he'd probably kill you before you had the chance to decide if you like him, because I can guarantee you that he _hates _you," Sophie assured him.

Mason nodded in understanding. "I have that effect on the fathers of beautiful women."

Sophie rolled her eyes, gesturing towards the T-shirt and jeans that she was wearing. "I am not a beautiful woman, Mason. Especially not right now. At best, I'm a quirkily cute girl with small boobs and a crap sense of style."

Mason shrugged. "I don't know. I mean, you're kind of all grungy right now because of what I'm assuming is just a rebellious drinking phase, and you look like you brush your hair maybe twice a week, but you have pretty eyes and a little bit of potential."

Sophie laughed, a little bit loudly as a result of the alcohol running through her blood. "That might be as close to a compliment as you've ever given me."

"I also have this hunch that you have a lot of sexual potential as well," Mason continued, winking at her. "You might be virginal, but I have this feeling that with the right poking and prodding—"

"Ew, gross, you ruined it Mason, you ruined the already half-assed compliment," Sophie said, smacking his shoulder with the back of her hand.

He chuckled, taking his turn with the whiskey. He took a long drink, stared at the bottle for a moment, and then took another. Then he turned and gave Sophie a cursory look. "Why?" he asked.

"For the last time, Anderson, I won't have sex with you because you're probably an incubator for some brand new sexually transmitted disease—"

"No," he interrupted her, and then he gestured towards the bottle in his hand. "Why are you doing this? When I left this dump a year and a half ago, you were the exact opposite of this. You had everything together. Cross country and track, student government, straight As…. What happened? It can't be _all _because of the bookworm, can it?"

Sophie's mouth turned into a thin line, and she looked at Mason in annoyance. "Well I certainly don't drink with you to talk about the reasons _why_ I'm drinking with you," she snapped.

He lifted his hands in surrender. "Hey, I'm the last person to judge life choices. But look—and don't ever quote me on this, because if anyone asks me I will deny it—but I like you, Winchester. You're cool, even though you were sort of the worst when we were sophomores. I just hope that whatever the reason is that you're drinking... I hope it doesn't stop you from being you. Especially if being you means being a stripper."

Sophie stared at Mason. And then she shook her head. "You're so drunk right now."

He laughed. "Yeah. Yeah I am."

And he didn't say anything more about it.

And neither did Sophie.

* * *

Sam and Dean were on a case.

The Winchester brothers were hunters. It was in their blood, in their destiny. It was laid out for them before they were even born. And though it was a tough, grueling, thankless job, it was hard for either of them to imagine themselves doing anything else.

But right now, Dean didn't want to be hunting. He wanted to be at home with his kid.

He wasn't an idiot. He knew that she was getting worse. He could see it in her appearance, in her vacant expressions and rapid weight loss. And he knew that if her outward health was declining so profoundly, then her inward health had to be faring even worse.

And even though he wasn't being woken up by her screams every single night anymore, he knew she was still being tortured by her own demons. He knew too well that those would take a long, long time to go away.

But at some point, Sam and Dean knew they needed to go back to helping people. And Sophie had urged them to go, urged them to help others. Dean knew she only did it because she thought she was beyond saving, but still, she had a point. People needed saving, and there were only so many other hunters Sam and Dean could deploy to work cases for them before they needed to start doing the dirty work themselves.

So here they were, in a small town in Colorado, investigating a string of killings committed by people who claimed to have no memory of them whatsoever.

And Dean was having an incredibly hard time focusing on the life or death matters at hand when Sophie wasn't picking up her damn phone.

They were sitting in their unsurprisingly crappy motel room, Sam at the table surfing the Internet for town lore while Dean sat on the edge of his bed, dialing Sophie's number and huffing angrily when it went to voicemail for the second time.

Sam glanced up at his brother from behind his laptop. "She's fine, Dean. If she wasn't, then we would have heard from Remy or Cas."

Dean just tossed his phone behind him and glared at the door angrily. "She used to always answer," he said, sounding almost like a petulant child. "The phone would ring once and she'd answer and she'd talk a million miles an hour about her day and tell us every single stupid detail of her life until I thought my ear would literally fall off."

Sam just looked at him. "Stop beating yourself up," he finally said. "The more you bitch about the way things are, the less you'll be able to change them."

Dean shot him an annoyed look. "Whatever. Let's just solve this case ASAP so we can get back home."

Sam nodded. "Well, if it helps, I might have a lead. Curly Mayfield, fifty-eight, killed by an angry father seeking revenge on him for butchering the man's kids. After his death he was linked to fifteen other child murders across the town."

"Yeesh. Don't blame the dad. So what? We thinking ghost possession?" Dean said, hopping up and glancing at the laptop screen over Sam's shoulder.

"That's my best guess right now," Sam responded with a nod, closing up his laptop. "C'mon, the lead detective from the Mayfield case still works at the precinct. Let's go pay him a visit."

Dean was already making his way to the closet and grabbing his FBI gear. "Alright. Let's gank this son of a bitch and then get back home."

Sam nodded. "Let's do it."

* * *

An hour or so later, when Sophie had come back down from her buzz, she walked across the parking lot from Mason's car and searched for her car keys in her backpack. Amid her search, she pulled out her phone and saw that she had three missed calls from her dad. She just shook her head and shoved her phone back in her pocket.

Dean called her a lot these days, and she did a lot of not answering.

She found her keys and unlocked her car, and she was about to get in and drive off when a voice called out to her, "Sophie, hold on."

She turned, mildly annoyed. Walking up towards her, hands in his pockets, was Jack.

She hadn't really spoken to him since they day she'd broken up with him, way back when she'd just resurrected. Since then, she'd avoided him at all costs, not wanting to bring up old wounds for either of them.

But here he was, looking taller if possible, and hotter than she remembered. Or maybe that was just the residual alcohol messing with her brain.

"What?" she finally said.

He looked at her, concern deep in his eyes. "You smell like a bar," he told her bluntly.

She shrugged. "I've gotta get home, Jack," she said, trying to escape.

He shook his head. "You're not driving drunk."

"Well, duh. I'm not drunk," she told him. "I was a couple hours ago, but not anymore."

"Of yeah? What's twenty-six times three?"

"Seventy-eight," Sophie replied after a quick mental calculation. "Satisfied?"

He just looked at her. "S…."

"Jack, don't, c'mon, don't do this to either of us—"

"I shouldn't have just let you go," he cut her off, ignoring her. "I shouldn't have let you get buddy buddy with Alcoholic Anderson over there. I just…when I heard what happened between you two at that party, I was angry, but…but I shouldn't have let you get in with him. You were so…."

"So what, Jack?" she snapped at him angrily. "Broken? Vulnerable? Traumatized? D, all of the above? Besides, you're not my boyfriend anymore, you don't _let _me do anything!"

"That's not what I—"

"Look, making out with Mason at the party was a huge mistake," she admitted. "But he's not a terrible guy. He's just screwed up, like the rest of us." _Like me_. "And he's generous with his hoard of alcohol. That doesn't make him bad."

Jack looked surprised. "So you're not still hooking up with him?"

She rolled her eyes. "I never _was _hooking up with him. We kissed at the party, decided we were better off as drinking buddies, and it's stayed like that ever since."

Jack looked a little relieved, but he still eyed her warily. "Does your dad and Sam know about the booze?"

Sophie decided that the conversation was over. "Jack, just leave me alone, for both of our sakes," she snapped, opening up her car door and jumping in, slamming it behind her. Before Jack could protest any further, she backed out of her spot and peeled out of the parking lot as quickly as possible, leaving him standing forlornly in her rearview mirror.

* * *

Sophie drove, holding the steering wheel tightly. She didn't think about Jack. Thinking about him hurt.

Instead, she did what she usually did when her feelings started to reach the boiling point inside of her. She shut them down completely. It had taken a long time to perfect it, but she'd finally been able to just turn herself off and make herself numb.

Numb was good. Not ideal, but good. Although you couldn't feel anything good when you were numb, you always couldn't feel anything bad, and for now, Sophie was going to call that a victory.

Of course, her unfeeling façade cracked a little bit when she heard a fluttering of wings and then a strong voice say, "Looks like you're finally talking to Jack."

She swerved on the empty road and then righted her car, looking over to see Remy in her passenger seat. She rolled her eyes and huffed, but said nothing.

"So you'll talk to Jack, but not to me," Remy noted, leaning back in his seat. "Great."

She turned to him and opened her mouth, but after thinking of nothing to say to him, she closed it and looked back at the road.

"Sophie, c'mon, you haven't said a word to me in weeks," he whined. "How long are you doing to do this? You're acting like a toddler."

She stared at the road ahead and tried to tune out his voice.

Remy just shook his head. "You'll talk to me. I'm going to make you."

Sophie just rolled her eyes and said nothing.

"Sophie, c'mon. I'm your friend, remember? I'm forever on your side. Not to mention the fact that I know the inner workings of your soul, including what it went through when you were in Hell. Why would you push me away? I can help you. I _want _to."

More silence.

Remy sighed dramatically, his green-grey eyes glimmering slightly. "That's it. I'm sorry, Ace, but you've left me with no choice." In a grand, overwrought fashion, he lifted his feet up and set them heavily on the dashboard of her car, letting the toes of his shoes leave smudges on her windshield.

Sophie couldn't help it. "Get your gross feet off of my car!" she snapped angrily.

Remy smiled widely. "I knew that would work."

"Off!" At her command, Remy obliged, seeming pleased just to finally hear her voice again. "Heathen," she muttered under her breath, eliciting a broad grin from Remy.

"See, was that so hard?"

Sophie rolled her eyes again. "Has it occurred to you that I just don't want to talk to you?" she said in a biting tone.

"I don't see why you wouldn't," Remy sighed. "I'm an absolute joy to talk to."

Sophie glared at him quickly before turning her eyes back to the road. "I know that it might be difficult to believe for someone as narcissistic as you, but you might want to start getting it through your annoyingly impenetrable skull that I. Don't. Want. To. Talk. To. You."

"Ouch, Ace, you're hurting my feelings."

"Get used to it."

"But you talked to Jack," he complained.

"Yeah, because he ambushed me," Sophie grumbled.

"You talk to that useless excuse for a human being."

"Mason?" Sophie shot back. "He's actually a cool guy."

"Oh, give me a break," Remy replied derisively. "The only reason you think he's cool is because he gives you free booze and fills your brain with his mind-numbingly idiotic complaints about his family so you can pretend for the tiniest sliver of a moment in time that you don't have a crap load of issues to work out."

"Whatever," Sophie replied, shaking her head.

Remy glared at her. "Okay, look. I let you have a little time to throw yourself the classic Winchester self-destruction party, because you are your father's daughter after all, but enough is enough!" His voice rose with each word, and Sophie was mildly surprised that by the end of the sentence he was actually yelling at her.

She just glared at him. "You don't know me like you used to, Remy," she spat at him. "Don't pretend to read my mind."

He didn't back down. "I don't need to read your mind to know you're going down a dangerous path. You need to freaking talk to someone about Hell, Sophie, because it's going to kill you. Do you understand me? You're going to kill yourself."

Sophie slammed on the brakes, feeling her anger and frustration beginning to bubble up inside of her. She pulled over onto the side of the road, put the car in park, and then turned to stare daggers at Remy. "It's_ whiskey_, Remy, not cyanide! I'm not killing myself! I don't need to talk about anything to anyone! I'm dealing with it."

"Look at yourself!" Remy shouted at her, and she saw a fragmented helplessness in his eyes. "You've lost weight. You don't take care of yourself. The last three things in your stomach were booze, coffee, and breath mints. Judging by the bags under your eyes you haven't slept well in God knows how long. Your dad—"

"Jesus, Remy, just stop!" Sophie yelled.

"Your dad thinks it's all his fault," Remy continued loudly. "Sam tries to help you but you just brush him off like you do to everyone else. Hell, you even screwed up your one normal relationship with Jamie all because you refused to go and try to fix things with her after the party in August—"

"Shut up!"

"No!" Remy yelled. "I'm tired of just standing by and watching you drink your way back to Hell, Sophie! I'm not going to do it!"

Sophie glared at him, and then she reached underneath her seat and pulled out one of the many small emergency bottles of cheap alcohol she kept in her car. "Well," she said, "if you're planning on sticking around, you're going to have to."

She unscrewed the cap and took a long draw from it, feeling the familiar comfort that now came with alcohol flooding her system. "Enjoy the view," she snapped, and then she got out of her car and slammed the door, putting the bottle to her lips and gulping down another shot's worth of whiskey.

Remy wasn't far behind her. "What exactly are you planning on doing, Sophie? Walking the rest of the way home? Or drinking yourself dead in a ditch?" he asked her.

"I know my way home," she said, walking straight ahead, not looking behind her even once. She took another long drink from the bottle, knowing at this point she was already on her way to being drunk again. "So screw off, Eremiel. I don't need your help."

She took another step, and with a fluttering of wings he appeared in front of her. She glared at him as she took another drink from the bottle. "Yes," he said, his voice lower, his eyes sad. "You really do."

"Get out of my way," she told him loudly.

"I'm sorry," he told her, shaking his head. "I didn't want to do this. But you need a wake-up call, Ace."

Before she could ask him what he was going to do, he had disappeared.

Sophie just rolled her eyes, looking back behind her at her car. She knew at this point she had taken in far too much booze to drive, and the bunker was probably only three miles or so up the road. So she just shrugged, knocked back another gulp of whiskey, and kept walking.

Ten or fifteen minutes later, when her brain was feeling light and fuzzy and her steps were getting a little unsteady, she heard a siren.

Astonished, she looked around to see red and blue lights popping in front of her eyes. She wondered for a moment if she had gone unconscious, and this was all just some strange, blurry dream. She didn't think she was even remotely close to drunk enough to be hallucinating.

But when a squad car pulled up next to her and a uniformed man through an open window ordered her to stop walking, she knew it wasn't a dream. Only a waking nightmare.

She wasn't quite sure what happened next. The officer asked her a few questions, one of which was her age, and when it became clear that she wasn't twenty-one, and was clearly intoxicated, she was helpless to do anything other than simply stand there as the officer placed cold cuffs on her wrists and ushered her towards the backseat of his car.

As she stared out of the window in dulled shock, she saw a flash of green-grey eyes in the taillights.

Remy hadn't been kidding.

This was one hell of a wake-up call.

And Sophie was determined not to answer it.

**Hello friends! Sophie is falling far and falling fast, it seems. It'll take the next couple of chapters for her to pull herself up by her bootstraps, because even if it doesn't seem like it, she still has a little farther to fall... But I think the end result will be worth the wait.**

**As always, thanks for reading and for leaving your forever helpful and inspiring reviews (except for you people requesting that I include spanking - I hate to disappoint readers, but this is not and never will be that kind of story) ~ Lacey :)**


	88. Chapter 88: All That Hilarious Hope

**Back by popular demand - A long update! Enjoy!**

_Chapter 88: All That Hilarious Hope_

By the time the officer had driven Sophie to the police station, which was quite a distance away from where he'd picked her up, she was sober enough to realize she could be in a lot of trouble. And of the trouble coming her way, her problems with the law were the least of her worries after she considered what Dean would do to her when he found out.

She was silent as the officer led her out of the car and into the station before uncuffing her and sitting her down at a desk. Lebanon was a tiny town, and so it wasn't surprising that the police station was mostly one medium-sized open room with one small holding cell situated in the corner and visible to everyone else in the building. Even though 'everyone else in the building' only amounted to about three other officers that didn't even glance at Sophie as the officer with her led her by them.

Once she was seated, the officer looked at her, and it might've been a trick of the light, but Sophie thought he almost looked sorry for her. "You said you go by Sophie, right?"

Sophie just nodded, afraid that if she spoke her words would slur and she'd just get in more trouble.

The officer glanced at his watch. "Alright, Sophie, well look. We get about a dozen underage possession and consumption cases per week here, and almost all of them are repeat offenders. But when I put your name through the system, it came up squeaky clean. I gotta talk to my boss first, but you might get a little bit of leniency. You're lucky, because I'm too damn close to retirement to care about filing a bunch of paperwork for a kid trying to get her kicks at the botom of a bottle. But you're gonna need to call mom or dad, you got it? And we're gonna have a serious talk about how drinking like this at your age is bad news."

She just nodded again, silent.

She remained quiet as the officer, who she learned was named David McHenry, went through the motions of putting her in the system. She only spoke when he asked her a direct question, and when she responded, her voice was soft and submissive. She didn't fight him, didn't talk back. There was no point.

She wasn't stupid. Acting up now would only make this infinitely worse.

She wasn't going to give Remy that satisfaction.

Eventually, Officer McHenry gave her a look. "Got a mom somewhere around here?"

She shook her head. "Dead."

McHenry's eyes softened. "What about a dad?"

She sat back in her chair. "He's out of town for work," she said.

"Well," he continued, "you're a minor, so you need a family member to come and get you. And, like I said, your record is squeaky clean, and I don't see you getting more than a warning."

"My dad's in Colorado," Sophie said quietly. "Maybe a seven or eight hour drive away."

"I think you ought to give him a call," McHenry told her sternly. "Another family member can get you if he's unreachable, but I think I'd prefer to get your father."

"Do I have t—"

"Yes."

She nodded, suddenly feeling a little nauseous. "Okay."

He led her to a phone on the wall, and gave her a look. "Call him up."

She gulped and dialed Dean's number. It rang a couple times, more than usual, but then after a moment she heard the phone pick up. "Yeah?"

Her mouth went dry. "Uh, hey Dad," she said, her voice a little low. "It's Sophie."

It was quiet on the other end of the phone for a few long moments. Then Dean spoke. "Mind telling me why you're calling from the Lebanon Police Department, darling daughter of mine?"

Sophie put a hand on her head, feeling the beginnings of what she imagined would be a terrible, terrible headache. "I think I got arrested."

There was a long pause. "You _think _you got arrested?" he asked, and she could hear his anger through the phone. "There isn't really much to think about, sweetheart, you either did or you didn't."

"Look, don't bother coming back, okay?" Sophie said under her breath. "Cas can come get me or something, I'll figure it out—"

"What did you do?" Dean asked her sharply. When she didn't immediately answer, his voice changed. "Are you okay? Did something happen? What—"

"I'm fine, Dad," she said, annoyed. She couldn't stand the concern in his voice. It reminded her that in her dad's eyes, she couldn't possibly have done anything wrong. She couldn't possibly have screwed up on her own.

But she had.

Another pause. "What for, Soph?" he finally asked.

"Underage possession and consumption of alcohol," she exhaled quickly, as if saying it faster would make it less serious. "They're going to let me off with a warning, I think."

Another pause. Then she heard Dean groan loudly. "Dammit, Sophie, are you freaking kidding me? Really? We talked about this the last time, you promised—"

"Don't lecture me on promises, Dad," Sophie snapped angrily into the receiver. "You know what, just don't worry about it, I'll find a way to have Cas get me."

"Sophie, don't—"

She hung up.

When she walked back to Officer McHenry's desk, he gave her a look. "Your old man driving back?"

"Not sure," she said. "Either way, he'll be a while."

McHenry nodded. "Well, look, I called my boss and he said to give you a slap on the wrist, issue a warning, and send you on your way."

Sophie felt a huge weight lift off her shoulders. "Thank you, Officer."

He gave her a stern look. "Drinking on the side of the road like you were is more than just illegal, Sophie, it's dangerous. Now I'm glad you weren't driving or doing anything else even more reckless and stupid, but you need to be careful now, you hear me? Stay away from the booze. It's no good for someone your age. Or your size, for that matter."

"Yes, sir," she said quietly.

He nodded, looking at her closely. "Who are you staying with while your dad's out of town?"

Sophie didn't hesitate. "My Uncle Cas," she said.

Officer McHenry motioned toward the phone Sophie had just come from. "Why don't you give him a call? If we can figure it out between him and your father, he may be able to take you home."

She nodded, walked back to the phone, and hoped she remembered Cas' number as she dialed.

Cas answered after a few rings. "Hello," she heard Cas say in an almost mechanical voice. "This is Cas Novak, uncle of Sophie Winchester, how may I help—"

Sophie rolled her eyes and cut him off. "Cas, it's me, and if that's your way of acting natural, you need to stick to your day job."

Cas let out a breath. "I rehearsed that quite a few times after Dean called me and told me to," he told her.

"Do you always just do what my dad tells you to do?"

"Only when it has to do with human gestures and methods of communication with which I am unfamiliar."

"I can tell," she responded. "Listen, the officer with me said I'm gonna get off on a warning, and he said you could pick me up if we coordinated with Dad—"

"I'm sorry, little lion," Cas told her, voice heavy. "Dean told me I wasn't allowed to get you."

Sophie was momentarily stunned into silence. "What_?_" she finally responded.

"He told me to tell you this might be a good wake-up call, and that—"

"Why does everyone think I need a stupid wake-up call?" Sophie exclaimed.

"Maybe because it is true," Cas responded.

Sophie didn't have enough energy to put up a fight with Cas. "So what?" she asked roughly. "I'm just stuck here until Dad gets back from freaking _Colorado_?"

"He told me to tell you that you should be glad he's not farther away."

Sophie let out a groan and roughly hung the phone up in frustration. She had to take a few breaths to calm down, knowing that this was what they all wanted—for her to get angry, to let her feelings bubble over, until she finally exploded and had a cathartic release that she could then move on from.

And she wasn't going to give them that.

So she just turned around and walked back to Officer McHenry's desk. He gave her a questioning look.

"There's been a slight change of plans," she told him, and she pointed towards the holding cell in the corner of the building. "I call top bunk."

* * *

Dean arrived at the police station around three in the morning.

When he'd gotten the call from Sophie, he and Sam had been in the middle of searching for the last remaining piece of Curly Mayfield that they could salt and burn in the hopes of ridding the world of his ghost. And when he got off the phone, Sam, who had been digging around the storage unit they'd broken into, looked up at him. "Well, whatever that was, it didn't sound good."

"Sophie just got herself arrested. For underage drinking," Dean muttered, closing his eyes and massaging his forehead. He needed a drink himself just for saying that.

Sam stared at his brother for several long moments, clearly trying not to freak out about the news that his niece had just been arrested, knowing his reaction would only add fuel to Dean's fire. "Well, you should go home, then," he finally said in a measured voice.

Dean heaved a big breath. "This case is almost finished, Sam, we've gotta close it out."

Sam lifted an eyebrow. "Yeah, Dean, and your daughter just got arrested. I can wrap it up here."

Dean shot him a sharp glare. "Why does it always have to be _my daughter_ whenever she does anything bad? Why can't it be _your niece_?"

"Dean."

He gave his brother a look across all of the junk in the storage unit. "You sure you got this?"

"Dude, I'm a grown man, and you need to go make sure she's okay. Of course I'm sure. I'll jump a car and be back in no time."

Dean nodded. "Okay. Good. Right. Okay. I'm headin' out then." He shoved his phone in his pocket and fished around for his keys. "Watch your back, alright? No dumb stuff, just gank the bastard and get home alright."

"Yeah, don't worry, I've got this," Sam said. Then he gave Dean a stern look. "And be smart with Sophie, okay? Don't let her off the hook, but don't bite her head off either, okay?"

"Oh ye of little faith."

And so the first thing Dean did when he got to the car was call Cas and instruct him _not _to bail Sophie out of the consequences of her crappy decision-making abilities. And then he made his way back to Kansas.

Fast forward seven and a half hours, and Dean was pulling up to the police station, tired and road-weary. He was starting to wonder if it had been too harsh of him to leave Sophie at a police station all night. Who knew who else was in there, what criminal might be breathing the same air as her, or whether or not this was something she'd ever forgive him for.

But when he walked inside, he saw that the building was practically empty, just a few sleepy officers at their desks.

Then he saw Sophie sitting at one of the officers' desks, an older man with salt and pepper hair, and they were playing a game of mini chess.

Unbelievable, Dean thought. His daughter managed to make everyone like her. Including the man who had _arrested _her.

As Dean approached the desk, he saw a smirk cross Sophie's face as she moved one of her pieces and declared in a victorious voice, "Check mate!"

The officer that had his back to Dean shook his head. "Christ, girl, where the hell did you learn to play chess like that?"

As she shrugged, Dean cleared his throat, and the officer swiveled around to look at him as Sophie glanced up as well, her face immediately draining itself of her previous victorious expression. The officer's wrinkled eyes widened a bit, and then he stood and looked back at Sophie. "This your old man?"

Sophie nodded, suddenly much more withdrawn.

The officer nodded, standing up and shaking Dean's hand. "Office David McHenry," he said, introducing himself.

"Dean Winchester," Dean responded shortly.

Officer McHenry gave Dean a long look. "Let's go up to the front desk while Sophie here puts the game away, we'll get her checked out and all that."

Dean nodded and walked with the older man, glancing back once at his daughter, who was slowly putting away the chess set. "You didn't even put her in lockup?" he asked in mild annoyance as they walked far enough away that Sophie couldn't hear them. "Handcuffs? Anything that might encourage her to _not _end up back here again?"

The officer shrugged. "I pulled a double tonight and I was bored, and she's good company and said she wasn't tired."

Dean just snorted. "So much for my attempt at teaching her a life lesson," he said under his breath. "It's those damn puppy eyes of hers, I swear."

McHenry handed him a clipboard with some papers to sign and fill out, and as Dean started on them the officer said, "Listen, your girl seems like a good kid. Not like the usual delinquents we get around these parts. Whoever called her in for drinking probably just cared a lot about her and wanted to give her a push in the right direction. I don't wanna ruin her life for what I'm assuming is just a little phase. Hell, I know my own 'little phase' wasn't so little." Then the officer chuckled. "I'm telling you, your kid's sharp as a tack. Only other person I've met who can beat me at chess has been married to me long enough to know all my moves."

"Yeah, sharp as a tack in my ass," Dean grumbled, and the officer chuckled again.

"Yeah, well, that's parenthood for ya. I got three girls and two boys, and it's hard as hell."

"I can't even imagine having five of her," Dean said, signing the last form and then looking back at McHenry. "Five times the obsession with boy bands would probably kill me."

The man just smiled and nodded. "Well, Mr. Winchester, you're home free. Let her sleep the rest of it off before you yell at her, alright?"

"We'll see," Dean sighed. He looked over at Sophie, who was looking over at them a little bit warily, and barked, "We're leaving, Jailbird, I've been driving all night and I'm tired."

She just walked up to them, hands in her pockets, and looked up at McHenry. "Thanks for the chess game, David," she told him. "And the burger."

Dean looked at McHenry in exasperation. "You're on a first name basis? And you bought her a burger? What kind of police station is this?"

McHenry just offered him a smile. "Ya'll have a good night."

* * *

Sophie didn't make eye contact with Dean for the entire walk out to the Impala, and he couldn't quite get a read on where she was at in her mind. She slid into the passenger seat, pushing a crumbled up fast food bag onto the floor, and when Dean hopped into the driver's seat and closed the door, he started, "Sophie—"

"You're mad, you're disappointed, I'm smarter than this, yeah I know, I get it, Dad," Sophie said gruffly. "Let's just go home."

Dean just glanced at her in surprise, at her red hair tied up into a messy ponytail and arms crossed tightly against her chest as she stared purposefully out of the window and away from him, and he just shook his head as he started the car and made his way silently to the bunker.

When he pulled up outside of the bunker, he put the car in park and turned it off, but when Sophie went to open the door she found it was still locked.

"You're right," Dean said suddenly. "I'm mad. I'm disappointed. And you are a hell of a lot smarter than this. But that's not it." He paused, and she finally glanced at him, green eyes slightly darker than usual. "You're starting to scare me, Soph," he admitted to her. "You're really, really starting to scare me."

She just looked at him, and for a moment, he thought he saw something flicker in her eyes. He thought that maybe, _maybe_, she was scaring herself, too, and she was going to finally open up a bit to him, finally let it all out and try to find a way to move on.

But then she turned away and manually unlocked her door. "I'm gonna go to bed," she said, and then she slid out of the car and shut the door loudly before making her way inside.

Dean just rested his forehead on the steering wheel.

He didn't know how much more of this either of them could take.

* * *

Dean stayed outside for a while after Sophie went inside. He called Sam to see how things were going over in Colorado. Curly Mayfield had a knife created with some of his own bone in the handle, and Sam had found it and destroyed it and escaped mostly unharmed. Apparently right before Mayfield's ghost went up in flames he'd managed to toss Sam down a flight of stairs, resulting in a sprained wrist, but other than that the case was closed.

After ascertaining that Sam was going to stay the rest of the night in Colorado and then head back in the morning sometime, and also after making a quick call to Cas asking him if he could pick up Sophie's abandoned car and bring it back to the bunker, Dean finally made his way inside, so tired he thought he could collapse into a heap on the floor there and then.

The lights in the bunker were off when he entered, which he figured was a good sign. He flipped some of the lights on and tossed his duffle bag onto the table before shrugging off his jacket and tossing it onto a counter as he made his way towards Sophie's room.

Nowadays, he needed to see her safe and sound before he went to sleep.

The door was closed when he got to it, and as quietly as possible he turned the doorknob and slowly pushed it open. When he saw Sophie lying in her bed, eyes closed tightly and body completely wrapped in blankets, he immediately relaxed.

She was okay.

He hadn't realized he'd been a huge knot of worry until he laid eyes on her sleeping form. Even though she was still being frustratingly distant and unreachable, even though she was fighting his and anyone else's help, even though she'd landed herself in the back of a cop car, the fact remained that she was unharmed and safe. Dean had to constantly remind himself that, considering the high level of danger out there, her safety alone was a victory.

So here she was. Now a delinquent and law-breaker, but still here. Safe. And for now, sleeping.

He decided in half a moment that he was going to forgo his bed for the night, and he went and grabbed her desk chair, dragging it over to the side of her bed and sitting in it. When he did, he heard her turn in her bed and groan.

Kicking himself for disturbing her sleep, especially since that wasn't something she got enough of these days, he watched her closely as she slowly turned over and away from him. "Don't," she moaned softly, almost unintelligibly, her shoulders quivering for a moment. "Jack, stop."

Dean raised an eyebrow. Jack? Since when was he a part of her Hell nightmares?

She turned again. "No," she mumbled, her eyebrows knitted together and sweat beading on her forehead. "Please, no…."

Instinctively, Dean leaned forward, gently pushing her hair out of her face with his hand. "I'm here, Soph," he said in a low voice. "I'm right here."

Her tossing and turning stilled, and her mumbling died down, and after a few minutes her face relaxed and she resumed her mostly peaceful sleep.

Dean sat back in his chair again, watching her. He'd done a lot wrong, he knew that. It was impossible to dispute. If he'd done everything right, she wouldn't have gone to Hell, wouldn't have had a reason to even be drinking, wouldn't have gotten arrested.

But judging by the way just the sound of his voice and the touch of his hand was strong enough to chase away the worst of her nightmares… he had to have done something right, too.

And that had to count for something.

* * *

When Sophie woke up the next morning, she blinked through her headache.

She hadn't been so drunk the night before that she couldn't remember every single thing that had happened. She remembered the fight with Remy, getting arrested, spending hours at the station, driving home with Dean.

She groaned, rubbing her eyes with her hands. Her dad was going to kill her.

"Yeah, I just might."

Sophie sat up quickly, ignoring the pounding in her head and bubbling in her empty stomach. To her great surprise, Dean was sitting in her desk chair by her bed, looking at her with a gruff and tired expression. "I said that out loud?" she asked in surprise.

"You sure did."

She looked at him quietly for a moment. "I told you that you didn't need to drive home," she finally said. "It was no big deal."

"No big deal?" Dean snapped, eyes flashing. "You got _arrested_."

"Actually, Remy got me arrested. And I didn't even get booked. I wasn't doing anything that bad."

"You were drinking," Dean said in an accusatory tone.

"Oh please, don't pretend to be some moral authority on underage drinking," Sophie grumbled, pushing the blankets off of her and hauling herself out of bed and towards her closet.

"Soph, we're going to talk about this," Dean said, trying his hardest to exercise patience.

"No, we're not," she called from the other side of the room. "It's Friday. I have school."

Dean glanced at the clock on her bedside table. "It's eight fifteen, you're already late."

"Just fifteen minutes. I'm still going," she said, and when she reemerged she was wearing a fresh pair of jeans and a grey sweater. "Bye."

"Sophie, this conversation isn't over."

"Sure it is, Dad," she said flippantly, grabbing her backpack.

Before he could argue any further, she escaped out of the door and closed it shut behind her.

And after finding her car in the garage, which she guessed Cas had brought home sometime last night, she grabbed her spare set of keys and made her way to school.

* * *

Sophie pushed the door to the front office open. She had to go get a late pass to take to class, and she was going to take her sweet time doing so.

Nowadays, she'd generally love an excuse to skip class. But when the alternative was having a forced heart-to-heart with her dad, which would inevitably end in sadness and frustration, she'd take a day of school.

She walked up to the front desk, where the secretary Michelle was sitting and typing away on her computer. Sophie briefly flashed back to the day she and her dad had first walked into the school, and he'd flirted with Michelle until Sophie stepped in.

Michelle seemed to remember, too, judging by the forced cordiality in her voice. "Good morning, Sophie. Late morning?"

"Car trouble," she lied smoothly.

"No problem," Michelle replied, typing something into the computer. "Looks like there's still ten minutes left in your first class with Mr. Derré, why don't you head on over there and catch the tail end of it?"

Sophie just nodded. "Sure."

Michelle wrote something on a sheet of paper and then handed it to Sophie. "Just give this to Mr. Derré and you should be all set."

"Thanks," Sophie said, taking it from her.

"So Sophie, how's your dad doing?" Michelle asked, glancing at her screen briefly. Sophie didn't miss the slightest blush on her cheeks.

She had to fight not to roll her eyes. Instead, she just smiled sweetly. "He's great. Just last night, actually, we had this great conversation about how hard it's been for him since he came out last spring, but really it's just been _such _a rewarding experience for all of us."

Michelle looked taken aback, just as Sophie expected. "Oh! Wow! That's, uh, great—"

"It's pretty fantastic, I won't lie. Anyway, it was wonderful to talk to you, but I'm going to head to class now."

"Of course," Michelle said quickly. "Have a good day."

Sophie turned around, smirked, and left the office.

She walked down the hallway until she got to Mr. D's room, where she paused at the door. Inside of that room was her ex-boyfriend, her ex-guardian angel that had called the cops on her, and if her dad had anything to do with it, her soon to be ex-drinking buddy. Not to mention the one teacher left at the school who seemed to give a damn about her after her recent decline in student quality.

But she was here, and she might as well get it over with. So she opened the door, walked straight past Mr. D mid-lecture, put the late pass on his desk, avoided everyone's gaze, especially Remy's, and made her way to her usual seat in the back of the classroom.

Mr. D paused for a moment and looked at her as she sat down and shoved her backpack under her desk, but then he just resumed his lecture.

About ten short minutes later, the bell rang, and Sophie quickly snatched her backpack and made to escape out the door before Jack or Remy could catch her.

"Miss Winchester? Can I talk to you for a minute?"

She looked over her shoulder to see Mr. D looking at her from the chalkboard, where he was erasing what he had written on it during class. She shifted the backpack strap on her shoulder. "Um, sure, but I have econ in a few minutes."

"No problem, it'll just take a second."

She walked back into the room as the rest of the kids filed out, and soon it was just her and Mr. D. He put the eraser on the ledge of the chalkboard and turned to look at her. "You have a D in this class," he said, point blank.

Sophie just shrugged. "Sounds about right."

Mr. D crossed his arms over his chest and looked at her closely. "You have perfect straight As throughout your entire time here, Sophie. And your English teachers have all agreed you're the most promising scholar of literature they've seen in years."

She looked back at him. "No offense, Mr. D, but why do you care?"

He looked at her, almost pityingly. "I love teaching, Sophie. I love teaching because I really care about each and every one of you. I love seeing how much potential you all have and helping you reach it. And it's hard to watch someone so bright fall so far."

She could feel herself closing in on herself. "Look, just write me off as one of your failures and call it a day, okay? I'm only graduating high school to keep my dad off my back. It's really nothing against you or your class, it's just not something I'm interested in right now."

He just stared at her. "But you're interested in drinking in parking lots with Mason Anderson?"

Sophie felt a startled blush fall across her entire face. "Um, I don't know what you're—"

"I'm not saying that to get you in trouble," he said calmly. "But a classmate of yours did come up to me and tell me about it. He was worried about your behavior recently, and honestly, I'd have to agree."

Sophie felt herself start to get angry. "It was Remy, wasn't it?" she accused. "Mr. D, he's just making it up, we aren't exactly BFFs right now—"

"Well," Mr. D said, walking away from Sophie and towards his desk, grabbing a book out from one of the drawers, "regardless of how true or false any of those allegations are, I'm not letting you get a D in this class. If you work hard, you can still pull a B or maybe even an A out at the end. And you'll start by doing an extra credit assignment for me, due next Friday. A three-page essay on the usage of puns in _The Importance of Being Earnest_." Then he handed the book to Sophie, which she reluctantly took into her hands.

"Mr. D—" she tried to argue.

Mr. D looked at her with level blue eyes. "Miss Winchester, if you don't do this assignment, I'll be forced to call for a conference with you, your father, and myself. And I think it's in _all _of our best interests that that never happens, okay?"

Sophie just stared at her teacher, fuming, before finally shoving the book in her backpack angrily.

"Great. Good talk," Mr. D said. "You can go to econ now."

* * *

Sophie ate lunch alone.

Before, she'd eat with Jamie, Harry, and Jack. Now, she and Jack couldn't communicate, she and Jamie weren't on great terms, and while she and Harry would still offer each other short looks of acknowledgment in the hall, things weren't the same between them either.

So now she usually took her lunch to her car and ate in the backseat while listening to One Direction.

Some things even Hell couldn't destroy, and Sophie's affinity for boy bands was one of them.

So that day, she grabbed her lunch out of her locker and walked out to her car, which she hopped into and closed as she stretched out along the backseat, leaning her head against the window and stretching her feet out until they touched the opposite door handle. She took out her peanut butter and jelly sandwich and took a bite, staring blankly out the window.

It was unseasonably cold for early October, almost forty degrees. She had heard a couple freshmen girls in the hall talking about a cold front that was supposed to last for the next couple days, and was suddenly glad that she always kept a spare jacket in her car.

She reached for her jacket, which was slung on the floorboard of the backseat of her car, shivering slightly. She grabbed it and tossed it over her body, too lazy to actually put it on, before realizing that underneath it rested a half-empty water bottle filled with Southern Comfort, which had been given to her by Mason a few weeks before. She'd forgotten it was even there.

She picked it up and stared at its contents, trying to figure just how she'd gotten to this point. Honestly, she hated the taste of alcohol. Especially Southern Comfort. And she hated disappointing the people she loved even more, which she knew is exactly what happened when she drank like she did. She hated the look in her dad's eye that he always had now, that self-loathing, powerless expression that she thought might become permanent.

But more than any of that, she hated her nightmares. She hated her memories. She hated what she'd been in Hell.

She and Mason had a pretty strict no drinking during school policy. It was the only way to keep their afternoons free of suspicion for the most part. Not to mention the fact that even though they were being a little rebellious, they knew that if they got kicked out of school their respective parents would destroy them. So they pretty much always kept the binging for after the bell, and that was that.

But Sophie was done with the rule-following. She was cold, she was tired, she was frustrated that her dad had abandoned his case to come to her rescue when all the officer had done was give her a little warning, she was still reeling from how bad her dreams had been the night before, how real they'd been, how they had exactly mirrored what had happened to her downstairs….

She unscrewed the cap of the bottle and took a drink.

The One Direction music reverberated pop tunes in the background as she sipped on the bottle. She vaguely noticed the faint ring of the bell signaling the end of lunch, but she ignored it, staying in her car and drinking the liquid in the bottle.

_Hands are silent. Voice is numb. Try to scream out my lungs. It makes this harder._

Sophie let out a small chuckle. If her dad could see her now, drinking in the back of her car and listening to a boy band ballad, he'd probably regret the day he ever decided to call her his.

Unless he'd already thought that before. Like last night.

She wouldn't blame him.

Seconds rolled over into minutes that rolled over into hours, and soon enough the alcohol was gone, the music had shuffled back to the beginning of the album, and Sophie had passed out in the back of the car.

* * *

_Sophie, princess, you need to look me in the eye._

_ I want to see all that hilarious hope of yours disappear._

_ Scream louder, princess, I want to hear how well those lungs are working before I fill them with blood._

_ Look me in the eye._

_ Scream._

_ Do you hear that pounding heart of yours? Means you know you're gonna need more blood soon enough, princess. The rest will be on the floor._

_ Look me in the eye._

_ Every part of you is mine to destroy, princess._

_ Do you hear that pounding?_

_ Scream louder, princess._

_ Do you hear that pounding?_

_ Look me in the eye._

_ Do you hear that pounding?_

"Stop!" Sophie cried, sitting up groggily, trying to remember where she was. She'd been asleep for maybe an hour, and she was still drunk. As she tried to collect herself, she realized in horror that she _could _hear the pounding. She could, and it was loud, and her hand flew over her heart and found that its banging against her chest was out of time with the banging in her ears.

And then she realized that the very, very unhappy face of Principal Grayling was staring at her from outside of her car, his hand pressed firmly on her window. He pounded on the window a few more times and then gave her an icy look. "Miss Winchester!" he yelled through the door. "Get out of this car and into my office immediately!"

_Oh no._

Still shaking from her nightmare, or maybe it was the booze, or maybe both, she sat up and opened the door to her car, sliding out and standing up, looking over at the fuming man in front of her. "Principal Grayling," she started.

"Follow me. If you can manage that," he said furiously, turning around and making his way to the building with Sophie in tow.

When they got to his office, he sat down roughly in his seat and motioned for Sophie to sit in the chair across from him. She glanced at the clock on the wall and gulped when she saw that it was two thirty. She'd missed her last three classes.

Principal Grayling looked at her closely, and then typed something on his computer and glanced at it. "Congratulations, Sophie. You have straight Ds this semester. And it's not hard to see why."

She didn't say anything.

When she didn't give him a reaction, he leaned back in his chair. "Drinking on campus is grounds for expulsion," he told her swiftly.

She looked down at her lap. Dean was going to kill her.

"I don't want to expel you," he continued. "I really don't. You may have straight Ds this semester, but every other semester has been straight As and gold stars and I really, really want to believe this is something you can get help for and get back on track."

Sophie looked up. "It's not," she said quietly.

Principal Grayling stared at her for a long time, and then he released a long breath and shook his head. "You're suspended for three days. And I'm calling your father to have him pick you up."

Even though Sophie knew it'd be futile, she had to try. "Principal Grayling, please, can't you call my uncle—"

"No," he snapped, picking up the phone and dialing a number. "Your father needs to know about this."

"Please—"

"Hello, Mr. Winchester? This is Principal Grayling." There was a pause, and then he lifted an eyebrow. "Actually yes. She's sitting in front of me now after skipping her last three classes to get drunk in the parking lot. I'm going to need you to come down here to pick her up and talk about the disciplinary action that needs to be taken against her." Another pause. "Of course. I'll see you soon."

He hung up the phone and looked at Sophie. "He sounds delighted," he told her sarcastically.

"I'm sure he does," she grumbled.

"Sophie, this is incredibly serious, I hope you realize that," Principal Grayling told her.

She just stared at her hands, silent.

"Miss Winchester!" Principal Grayling exclaimed in frustration. "Look me in the eye and tell me you know this is serious!"

Unwittingly, Sophie flinched at his words.

_Sophie, princess, you need to look me in the eye._

She lifted her head and looked at him. "I know," she finally said.

"I don't want to sound trite, but you have quite a lot of potential, Sophie. I don't want this to be something that hinders you forever."

Sophie just sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. _Yeah, well, Hell will probably hinder me forever_, she wanted to say, but she kept her mouth closed.

She sat quietly and awaited her doom as Principal Grayling wrote some emails and made a call to another school about setting up a venue for AP exams in the spring.

She'd been there, quietly existing somewhere in between drunk and sober for nearly forty minutes, before she heard a familiar set of booted footfalls in the office, and her heart rate doubled.

She saw Principal Grayling look up at the doorway behind her and nod. "Hi, Mr. Winchester."

Sophie glanced over to her right as her dad sat down in the chair next to her. He had a stony look on his face and refused to look over at her, which just made her turn her head back to her hands. "Let's cut to the chase, how much trouble is she in?" Dean asked snappily.

"Three day suspension," her principal responded. "And she'll have to take an alcohol awareness course online that will last until the end of the school year."

Dean sat back in his chair. "Sounds a little lenient to me," he said brusquely.

"Dad," Sophie muttered indignantly.

He ignored her. "Shouldn't it be a week or something like that?"

Principal Grayling looked at Mr. Winchester closely. "She's got a clear record a mile long and a dozen teachers willing to say that before this year, she was one of the best students Lebanon Central has ever seen. And even though she has straight Ds right now—"

"Straight Ds?" Dean exclaimed angrily.

"—I'm optimistic that a scare like this will set her back on track," Principal Grayling continued. He turned his gaze to Sophie. "Keep in mind, this suspension goes on your permanent record, and you'll have to tell colleges about it when you apply. Don't dig yourself into a hole you can never get out of, Miss Winchester."

When she didn't reply, Dean shifted in his seat. "Anything else?"

Principal Grayling shook his head. "You're free to take her home. Come back to school next Thursday ready to turn over a new leaf, Sophie, are we clear?"

"Yes," she lied.

"Good. Have a splendid weekend."

Dean stood up and didn't even wait for Sophie before walking out of the office. Sheepishly, she got up and followed him through the office and out the door to the parking lot.

He still hadn't looked her in the eye when they got to the Impala, which was parked a few spaces away from her own car. "Get in," he said tonelessly.

"Dad—"

"Sophie," he said, finally looking at her, and when his eyes met hers she saw pure anger and defeat in his eyes. "Get in."

"No," she said, digging around in her pocket for her keys. "I'm just going to drive home on my own."

"Not happening, you're still drunk," Dean said, shaking his head and waiting on the driver's side of the Impala for her to get in. "Now come on."

"I'm not still drunk, I'm—"

"Sophie!" Dean yelled, and she jumped at how he'd gone from his regular voice to his scary voice in no time at all. "I'm trying very hard not to fly off the handle with you right now, I really am—"

"Why?" she challenged. "Am I too fragile and broken for you to talk to me like a real person?"

Dean narrowed his eyes. "You want me to talk to you like a real person? Fine! You got arrested for drinking _less than twenty-four hours ago_! You spent last night at the damn _police station. _What the hell are you doing sitting in the parking lot drinking again?"

"I don't know, Dad, it's five o'clock somewhere—"

"You're not funny, Soph! In fact, you're scaring the hell out of me!" he yelled at her. For the first time ever, Sophie had the feeling that Dean was physically restraining himself from trying to beat some sense into her, and she was glad that the Impala stood between him and her. "What if the next time I get a call from the police department or your principal, it's because you were found dead in a ditch or some alley or God knows where? You're killing me, Soph! You're killing me, and Sam, and Remy, and everyone else who cares about you! We're all losing our damn minds because you're such a stubborn idiot and won't let a damn person actually help you!"

Sophie just scoffed. "That's rich, coming from the man who—"

"The man who did the same thing?" Dean challenged, eyes flashing. "You're damn right I did the same thing, and you know what? I'm ruined. No matter how long I live, I'm gonna be scarred by what I didn't let anyone help me with. I have to live with that now. And it's goddamn terrifying to me that you might have to live the same way, after everything I tried to do to avoid that."

The keys to her car burned hot in Sophie's hand. "Whatever, Dad," she said in a low voice, and then she turned around sharply and walked quickly towards her car.

He was running after her by the time she'd slid into the driver's seat and slammed the door shut. "Sophia Marybeth Winchester, don't you freaking _dare _drive that car anywhere right now!" he yelled at her, running towards her.

She twisted the key in the ignition and put the car in reverse, and just as Dean was slamming his palms onto her window she rocketed backwards and put the car into drive.

"Sophie, stop!" Dean yelled at her, both in fear and anger.

She just pushed down on the accelerator and shot clear out of the parking lot.

**I know this was a long and somewhat scattered chapter, but I needed it to set up the next chapter, which is gonna be a little crazy and heated and emotional.**

**Just a heads up, while I will try my darndest to get a chapter up by next Saturday, I will be traveling all that weekend and might not have an opportunity to post. If that's the case, I will post the next chapter two Saturdays from now.**

**Also, just FYI, I always try to answer the questions asked to me in reviews, and sometimes I try to respond to individual comments. If you're a guest reviewer, this answer will generally come in the form of a tumblr post, which can be found on LaceyoftheTypewriter on tumblr. Just thought I'd let you know.**

**Thanks friends! ~ Lacey :)**


	89. Chapter 89: Pain Without Quarter

**Just a little disclaimer - this chapter is a little bit more mature than most. I also will say it's the _most _mature chapter we'll see in this story, so if it doesn't sit well with you, I promise it's an isolated event. But there're some adult situations and lots of feelings that go along with them. **

_Chapter 89: Pain Without Quarter_

Sophie drove for a little under an hour, until the sun started to sink into the sky. She had disabled the GPS in her phone and on her car, and she carried a hex bag she'd found in the stash of strange things at the bunker that would conceal her location even to Cas and Remy.

She knew where she was going. And she knew what she was going for. And she didn't want anyone to get in her way.

Over her last few years at Lebanon Central she'd heard about a bar a few towns over that didn't card underage customers and pretty much had the most lax security on earth. A lot of high schoolers would go there for kicks and giggles to try and prove their adultness.

Sophie wasn't trying to prove anything. She just wanted to get drunk. Again.

But what else was new?

Eventually, she pulled into the bar, a little hole in the wall called The Farmhouse, and parked the car crookedly on the street since all the parking spots were full. She looked in the mirror and decided that with her boots, jeans, and sweater she looked like maybe she could pass for older than seventeen. She searched in her glove compartment for the eyeliner and mascara that she rarely used and quickly applied them as well as some chapstick, confident that they made her look at least like an adult. Then she took her hair out of its ponytail and let it fall in soft curls down to her shoulder blades, running her fingers through it a few times to tease out the tangles and try to get rid of the dent created by her hairband. Once she was satisfied with her appearance, she grabbed her phone and keys and got out of the car.

When she got to the door of the bar, she slipped the bouncer a five dollar bill for her cover charge, and he barely gave her a second look before motioning for her to go in.

It was honestly too easy.

She made her way through the surprisingly crowded dive and found a mostly deserted corner up at the bar, behind which two bartenders were working hard to get everyone's drinks made. One of the girls came up to her and asked what she wanted, and she asked for a double shot of whiskey. The girl didn't even bother asking for her ID.

While she was waiting for her drink, Sophie glanced around the bar. There were a lot of people inside, which Sophie supposed was characteristic of a Friday evening. It was dark and loud, but Sophie could make out the older college-aged crowd playing pool. On the other side of the bar, there were a few kids she suspected were even younger than herself, laughing and drinking Amaretto sours like they were the biggest badasses in town. And then there were some folks that she assumed were regulars, drinking beers and watching the pre-game football show for a college game she really didn't care about.

The bartender got back with her drink and Sophie gruffly thanked her, closing her fingers around the glass and looking at it closely. She stared at it without really seeing it, thinking about the frustration in her dad's eyes, about the disappointment and the fear that had been as plain as day on his face, and she quickly blinked and downed the contents of the small glass.

"You look a little small to be drinking so much so fast."

She turned to see the face of a man who had taken the seat next to her so swiftly and smoothly she hadn't even seen him coming. He was handsome, maybe late twenties, with black hair, attractive scruff on his face, and charming blue eyes.

She lifted the glass a little bit off the counter. "I've developed a tolerance I'm not exactly proud of," she admitted.

He grinned at her, showing a row of straight white teeth. "I can respect that," he said, and he extended a hand. "I'm Wes," he said.

Sophie took the hand and shook it. "Sophie," she replied.

"I don't think I've ever seen you around here before," he told her. "I used to come here with my college buddies all the time, and I think I would've recognized you."

She shrugged. "Usually I drink in the backseat of cars in parking lots."

Wes laughed. "That's a little less exciting than what I like to do in backseats of cars in parking lots."

Sophie grinned, and in the back of her mind, she knew he was hitting on her. She knew what he was aiming for. But she honestly didn't mind the harmless banter with a stranger. It was nice to talk with someone who wasn't constantly concerned about her mental state for once. Even if the man just wanted to get into her pants.

Wes saw her grin and seemed emboldened. "How about another round, on me?"

Sophie sat back in her chair and gave him a smile. "I thought you'd never ask."

* * *

About thirty minutes later, Sophie was getting a little buzzed again, and she was laughing with Wes and having a good time with him, only slightly aware of how close he'd gotten to her and how his hand rested on her knee. "So you're a twenty-eight year old professional tour guide?" she laughed.

"Hey, someone's gotta take people through museums nobody really cares about," he said, eyes bright, moving to and from her eyes and her mouth. "But what about you? Got some crazy career I should be worried about?"

She laughed and shook her head as she tapped her finger on her second empty shot glass. "I'm a student."

"Oh," he said, looking pleased with this information. "What year?"

"Senior," she said. "Graduating next spring, if I'm lucky."

He laughed. "What's your major?"

"Literature," she said, knowing she'd just cemented her lie about her age but a little too buzzed to really care.

"Literature," he repeated with a somewhat sly grin. "You must have quite an active imagination." All at once, she realized now that he was very, very close to her, and his voice dropped to a whisper. "Can you _imagine_ what exactly I want to do right now?"

"Um, Wes," she tried, but then suddenly, his lips were on hers and she froze as the warning bells sounded off in her head.

This was wrong. This was wrong. This was wrong.

This was _so _wrong.

She was about to voice her thoughts when he deepened the kiss, and then in the haziness of her mind she flipped a switch and decided she didn't want to care.

She didn't want to feel the wrongness anymore.

Besides, Wes seemed nice enough, and he was a great kisser. A really, really great kisser. So she kissed him back.

After a minute or so he pulled away and brought his lips to her ear. "My apartment's just a couple minutes away."

Sophie's head was ringing and buzzing and she just looked into his eyes and nodded.

He slapped some bills on the bar and took her hand, leading her through the crowded bar and out the door. She knew full well that she wasn't nearly drunk enough to be blaming this all on the alcohol. She knew full well that he wasn't dragging her off or coercing her into anything. This was on her. And she didn't care. She just didn't give a single damn.

A part of her just wanted to do something to feel again.

To feel something other than worthless and broken.

Sophie got into the front seat of his car, a cheap truck, and listened to the country music on his radio for a few minutes before they pulled into a relatively crappy apartment complex that looked like it hadn't been renovated in half a century.

They pulled right up to his door and he turned the car off and got out of the car. Sophie followed suit, her brain fuzzy and her body shivering. The cold front had come in at full force and it had to be right at freezing temperature, and her teeth were chattering.

Wes just took her hand and pulled her through his doorway, into the heat, before closing the door behind her.

There were no lights on in the apartment, but she could make out the open floorplan as they walked through the living room area towards the sprawling mattress lying flat on the ground on the opposite side of the room. Her heartbeat started to race uncontrollably as he sat down on the edge of the mattress, her hand still in his. His eyes gleamed in the dark, and without warning, he pulled her down onto his body and pressed his lips to hers again.

His mouth was rough against hers, impatient and hungry and far, far more experienced than she could have even imagined based on her previous romantic explorations, which were quite tame in comparison. As she tried to keep up, he flipped their bodies so that she was beneath him and pushed her into the mattress, letting his lips trail down her neck and to her pulse point so that she could gasp for breath. He wasted no time in sliding his hands underneath her shirt, leaving trails of icy cold up her stomach, before he withdrew them and tangled them in her hair, kissing her deeply again.

Everything was so fast. Just a minute ago, she'd been fighting with her dad. Just a second ago, she'd been drinking at a bar. Now she was here, at a strange apartment in bed with a strange man and everything was happening so quickly it made her breathless.

Nothing had ever been this fast with Jack.

Her world spun as Wes wrapped his arms around her back and pulled her up until she was sitting straddled against him, far enough up off the bed that he could remove her sweater effortlessly. With swift hands, he also tugged her shoes and socks off, leaving her feet cold and bare as his lips teased hers.

Then he descended upon her again, and Sophie couldn't help but gasp when he nibbled on the skin of her neck as he rocked his body against hers, and for the first time in weeks, Sophie began to feel again. It was a dark and insidious mockery of feeling, but feeling nonetheless.

She kissed him in return, running fingers under his shirt and around to his back to pull him closer, trying to keep up with the tempo he'd set forth, and he obeyed the suggestion of her fingers immediately. His hands reached under her again, and for a moment, she naively thought that his hands must be trapped between her back and the mattress. But then moments later she felt the hooks of her bra come undone and a hand pull the garment off her body and toss it into the abyss of the surrounding darkness.

For a moment, she froze. She'd never gone this far with anyone. Not with Jack, and certainly not that time with Mason.

Something was wrong here. Something was so, so wrong.

But the moment that sense of wrongness fought its way through the confused mess of her mind, Wes' mouth was all over her, and she shut the unsure voice down and let Wes continue.

To feel. She had forgotten how wonderfully normal it was just to _feel,_ even if those feelings were entirely surface level. And God, whatever Wes was doing right now, whatever she was _allowing _him to do…it sure as hell was making her feel.

She pulled his head up after a while and locked lips with him again before struggling to pull off his shirt. He chuckled at her attempt, calling her some cutesy name that she immediately forgot. Then he lifted himself off of her for the five seconds it took him to discard the shirt and fell back on her, their bare chests pressed together as they continued to kiss.

After a while of kissing and touching and exploring and _feeling_, Sophie was aware of his hands reaching her jeans, and she didn't even react when she felt the button come undone and the zipper get pulled down. He pushed her down against the pillows and reared up off of her long enough to pull the jeans off of her body, and for the first time in her life, she was in nothing but her underwear with a man.

The warning bells, which she had shoved to the back of her mind, started to ring louder and louder as Wes began to pull off his jeans as well, leaving him in just boxers. They continued to sound off in her head as he covered her body with his again, practically grinding himself into her as his mouth kissed all over her body, everywhere that he could possibly reach with his mouth.

The bells were quickly becoming sirens that Sophie tried her damndest to ignore.

And then when his hands crept down her stomach to the waistband of her underwear, the sirens were screaming in her head, so loudly that she briefly wondered if they could render her entirely deaf.

But they didn't, and they continued to scream, like an imprisoned soul banging on the walls of its cage and yelling, _You don't want this! You've never wanted this! You're making a mistake!_

And then finally, the tiniest, smallest fraction of her brain began to believe herself.

Her first reaction was to grab Wes' hands just as they were about to slip into her underwear. "Wait," she whispered, and she continued to kiss him, hoping to distract him.

He was patient for a few moments, but then he shook his hands out of her grasp and went back to her underwear, hooking his fingers through the waistband and pulling them down centimeter by centimeter.

The screams in her head turned into angry shrieks, and she grabbed his hands again. "Wes, wait, I'm serious," she said, this time a little more clearly.

"Babe, it's okay," he told her in a low voice, leaning down and giving her a deep, slow, intense kiss that caught her off guard and caused her grip on his hands to slacken entirely.

Before she knew it he was out of her grasp again, and this time, before she could make another go for his hands, he wasted no time in yanking her underwear clean off her body, tearing them slightly in the process and leaving her naked underneath him.

Her body went rigid in its most vulnerable form. The words _I don't want this _were no longer just emanating from a hidden, disembodied voice at the back of her mind. They were what _she _said in her mind, what she knew to be true.

Now, somehow, almost miraculously, her head was clear. She wasn't drunk enough to not make a choice. She wasn't drunk enough to just _let _things happen to her.

And right now it was abundantly obvious to her that this was wrong. This was so wrong. She didn't like this guy. She didn't even know him. He was eleven years older than her, and that was only if he'd been telling her the truth about his age in the first place. And she had been using him, just like he had been using her.

She was so, so hurt, and she wanted to feel, and as his hands slid down her body again, she knew she didn't want this, even if she'd been telling herself that she did the whole time.

She grabbed his hands yet again, this time with a vicelike grip. "No, Wes, I'm sorry," she said sharply, dodging his lips as he went to kiss her again, another attempt to get her to bend to his will. But now, instead of his kisses exciting her, they made her feel like she wanted to throw up. She tried to sit up from underneath him. "I can't do this."

"Of course you can," he said, sounding annoyed for the first time that night, and he ripped his hands out of hers and threw her back against the mattress, quickly pinning her down underneath his weight.

"No," she said sharply, pushing hard against his chest and making him fall off her with a shocked noise, as if he was surprised she had that much strength in her body. She lifted herself up onto her elbows and tried to disentangle herself from his limbs. "I know this wasn't fair to you," she said hurriedly, suddenly very, very, _very _conscious of her nakedness. "But I don't want this, I'm sorry—"

"Sophie, babe, of course you want this, you wouldn't be here if you didn't," he said, wrapping an arm around her waist as she made to slide off the mattress and pulling her backwards against his body, her bare back hitting his chest, causing her to shudder. Then, with somewhat aggressive force, he put a hand on her back and shoved her face first into the mattress, covering her body with his soon after. She felt his other hand brush against her as he went to push down his boxers.

She struggled against him for a moment, trying to dislodge herself from the tight spot between the mattress and his body, but his hand pushed down painfully hard between her shoulder blades and he let the fingers of his free hand lightly play with her hair. "I promise, babe," he whispered directly into her ear. "I can make you feel so good."

And that's when she started to freak out.

"No! Get off me!" He froze at her words, but didn't move. "I. Said. _No_!" she exclaimed loudly, her voice nearing a shriek. She elbowed him in the ribs three times as hard as she could, each time screaming out in defiance, "No! No! No!" She felt the _whoosh _of his breath against her neck as the air left his lungs, and he immediately relinquished his tight grip on her body and rolled off of her.

Panicking, she scrambled away from him in the dark, falling off his mattress in a tangle of sheets. She just grabbed the sheets and wrapped them around her as she looked around in the dark for her clothes.

And then there was a hand on her neck and she stood up straight in an effort to defend herself, but Wes just pushed her away from him, causing her to fall into a wall. "Get out of here, you goddamn tease!" he yelled at her as she tightened the sheets around her body. Shaking, she went to feel around for her clothes, but then he boomed, "I said get the hell _out_, you crazy bitch!"

She jumped at his voice, and honestly, she was afraid if she stayed any longer he might do something other than just command that she leave. So she wrapped herself up even tighter in the sheet and stumbled towards the door, mechanically grabbing her cell phone that she'd left on the counter when they'd come in, and then practically falling over herself as she made her way out of the apartment.

Wes slammed the door behind her, mumbling something about how he needed to smoke a joint, and she stood in front of the door, clutching onto the sheet that was so large it pooled around her ankles. She might've stood there frozen forever if a sharp, cold wind hadn't cut through and hit her full force.

She immediately ran towards the softly lit little alley in between two apartment buildings, which housed nothing more in its dark recesses other than a soda machine and an ice maker. The night was freezing, and she shivered uncontrollably as she slid down the wall and sat on the ground, wrapping herself nearly four times over in the grey sheet that had been on Wes' bed.

And then she started sobbing.

She hadn't cried outside of her nightmares in…who knew how long. After all, crying was indicative of feeling, something Sophie hadn't done a lot of in the past month or so. But right now she was feeling everything.

And above all, before anything else, she felt regret. A stinging, painful, embarrassing regret.

The wind blew down the alley and her teeth chattered as she pulled out the phone she'd swiped with trembling hands. She didn't really have any other options. She knew what she had to do.

Slowly, she dialed the number she knew by heart, and with tears pouring down her face and body shivering unstoppably, she put the phone to her ear.

It was picked up in mere moments. "Dammit, Sophie!" Dean's pissed voice came through the receiver, filled with worry and frustration. "It's been hours and I've been working my ass off to find you! I swear to God, if you're halfway to North Carolina right now, I'm going to kill you!"

She couldn't say anything immediately. Her sobs were too strong, keeping her from speaking properly, and she just gasped unsteadily as she tried to rein in her emotions long enough to form words.

Dean's voice went from pissed to protective in practically no time at all. "Soph, what's going on? What happened? Where are you?"

Another gust of wind blew through, and Sophie's shivers multiplied. "D-d-d-dad," she chattered through cold and tears, unable to get anything else out immediately.

She heard shuffling on the other side. "Soph, are you okay? Where are you?"

She couldn't form words. She could barely breathe. She could barely think.

"Sophie, kiddo, please say something. Talk to me, I'm right here," her dad said to her in a panicked voice. His fear only succeeded in intensifying her cries.

"I m-m-messed up, Dad," she sobbed. "I r-really m-m-messed up."

That. That right there. _That _was what feeling felt like. It felt like admitting she was wrong, it felt like necessary defeat. And it hit her like a train all at once. Sadness, regret, disappointment. Feeling.

"Sophie, breathe, just breathe," he said slowly, but she could hear the worry in his voice. "Whatever it is, it's gonna be alright, I promise. Just tell me where you are."

"I'm ready to t-t-t-talk now," she told him through her gasping tears. "About H-hell. I c-can't d-d-do this anym-more, Dad. I'm s-sorry, I'm s-so sorry."

"Soph," Dean said, sounding desperate. "You have nothing to be sorry for, kiddo, you just need to tell me where you are."

"I d-don't know," she moaned. "I c-can't remember the n-name…."

"It's okay, it's okay, that's fine," he told her shortly. "Just reactivate that GPS in your phone, okay, and Sammy and I will come get you. He just got back from Colorado."

"Ok-kay," she squeezed out. Another gust of wind hit her just as a new sob exploded out of her chest as she took the phone away from her ear and managed to still her hands long enough to find a way to turn the GPS back on. "I t-turned it on," she told him.

"Good, that's really good, sweetheart," he said, and she could tell he was trying to keep his voice calm and steady for her sake. She could hear him mumble something to Sam away from the phone and then return. "Sammy's gonna figure out where you are and then we'll come get you, okay?"

She meant to reply with a simple 'okay' but her teeth were chattering too hard to get it out right away.

"Are you somewhere safe?" he tried.

Sophie let out a derisive, sobbing laugh. "I g-guess. It's really c-c-cold, and I can't g-go inside, and I'm not..." _Not wearing anything_, she almost said, but then she thought twice and started sobbing even harder. "God, Dad, I j-just…I'm s-sorry…."

She heard him curse, and she could just picture him standing in the bunker, running a hand over his face, helpless as she sobbed to him. "Sophie, baby girl, it's gonna be—"

There was a beeping noise, and when Sophie looked at the screen of her phone, she saw that the call had been lost.

She tossed the phone onto the ground beside her and pulled the sheet even tighter around her body. She shivered, thinking about how she'd almost slept with a total stranger for no other reason than she couldn't figure out another way to get rid of the numbness. She hadn't even been that drunk. She'd almost done it on her own. She thought about how she'd fallen so far from who she'd been.

The wind blew past her and her shivering and teeth chattering grew violent. If Sam and Dean didn't get there fast enough, she would surely freeze to death, sitting outside naked and covered in nothing but a bed sheet.

Maybe she deserved that.

Maybe she deserved worse.

Or maybe, just maybe, she deserved better.

But she guessed it didn't really matter what she deserved. All she knew was that she was here, stranded with no clothes in the freezing cold, with nowhere to go until her dad and Sam showed up and found her.

Part of her wanted to go in and try to get her clothes back, but Wes had been so aggressive and angry, and she didn't want to risk him not being as willing to let her go the second time around.

So she sat there, crying and shivering uncontrollably, until finally, two familiar headlights lit up the spot where she sat.

She didn't lift her head from the spot where it'd fallen on her knees, afraid the small bit of warmth her body gave off when she was curled into a ball would dissipate. Instead, she listened as the doors to the Impala squeaked open and slammed shut almost simultaneously, and two sets of boots ran in her direction.

"Sophie!" she heard Dean call to her, his voice filled with panic, and then as he got closer, he said her name again, this time in a disbelieving and heartbroken voice. "Sophie?"

She started sobbing again, and immediately she felt a presence right by her side. "Soph," she heard Sam say quietly. His voice was close to her, so he had to be kneeling down beside her. "Soph, look up at me, please. Are you hurt?"

She couldn't do it. She couldn't look either of them in the eye, not when she was covered in nothing but a sheet. She just remained as she was, completely humiliated and trembling like a leaf.

"Jesus, Dean, she's gotta be freezing," Sam said under his breath, and she heard Sam shrug out of his jacket and take his plaid shirt off, leaving him in nothing but his undershirt. "Soph, c'mon, put this on."

She was frozen. She couldn't move, didn't want to disentangle herself from her sheet, but she knew she was close to freezing and maybe already on her way to pneumonia. "Soph, please," Sam said quietly.

Slowly, painstakingly, she withdrew one bare arm from her sheeted cocoon and shakily took the shirt. She turned away from them so that she was facing the opposite way, and with hands shaking so hard she could barely control them, she dropped the sheet part of the way down her body so that she could pull Sam's shirt over her head, and it was so big that it covered her thighs, which she was thankful for.

But she wasn't able to cover herself before exposing her entire bare back to them, and the faint beginnings of a rather large bruise right between her shoulder blades from where Wes had shoved her down onto the bed face first.

When she turned back around, she was still crying. She had thought by now she'd run out of energy to cry or the tears would've frozen in her eyes, but they were still flowing. Sam's warm voice filled her ears again. "Soph, just look at me, alright?" he said as he placed his jacket around her shoulders. After he'd done so, she rewrapped the sheet around herself for another layer.

It took a moment, but finally, she lifted her head, and she saw Sam squatting down next to her, looking at her in utter concern and heartbreak. And then her eyes landed on her dad, who was standing a foot behind Sam with the most furious look on his face that she'd ever seen.

She couldn't take it. "I m-messed up," she whispered. "I'm sorry."

Dean's eyes raked across her, and she saw his face darken with a strange look of hatred, disgust, rage, and sadness. And then he said in a voice so low and angry she almost didn't hear through her fear, he said, "Who did this to you?"

"It's my f-fault," she choked out. "I went home with him, I w-wasn't even that d-drunk, I shouldn't have..."

When he realized what she was saying, Dean's face briefly contorted. Sophie had to look away.

Sam softly placed a hand on one of hers and looked at her in the eye. "Sophie, did you and this guy…were you…did he…."

Sophie shook her head as vehemently as she could. "I t-told him t-to stop and he threw m-me out."

"Is that it?" Sam asked, not sounding convinced.

She tried not to choke on her cries, not knowing how to explain it to them, even if she could stop her chattering for long enough to tell them. How could she tell her dad and her uncle that she'd had every intention of sleeping with Wes, and that when she'd finally gotten the sense to say no she was so far into it that he didn't even know she was saying no, and when he figured that out, he was just pissed. And while he'd acted upon that frustration in an unforgivably harsh manner...it didn't take away from the fact that honestly, he had a reason to be frustrated.

So she just shook her head, every limb shivering.

Dean released an angry noise from the back of his throat that she wasn't sure she'd ever heard before, causing her to look up at him again. His eyes were so dark Sophie thought they were almost animal. "Did he touch you?"

Sophie didn't answer. How was she supposed to? He'd touched her, alright. And for the most part, Sophie had let him. But she didn't think Dean would really see it that way.

"Sophie!" he said sharply. "Did he touch you?"

"Dean," Sam started reproachfully, "now isn't the time—"

"_Sophie._"

More tears fell from her eyes. "D-dad, it was m-my fault—"

"_Son of a bitch_!" Dean exploded, causing Sophie to flinch. He took a step back, pacing around in a small circle a couple of times, running a hand down his angry, angry face, before walking back up to Sam and Sophie. "Which one of these crap apartments is his?" he asked her sternly, his face deathly expressionless.

"No, Dad—"

"Sophie," Dean said in a loud, scary voice that caused her to shudder, "I don't care if I have to break down the door of every damn apartment in this place! _Which one is his_?"

"Dean!" Sam snapped. "Stop yelling at her!"

"Which one?" Dean yelled again, ignoring him. She shook her head. "Dammit, Sophia. _Which. One?"_

"Dean!" Sam tried again angrily.

"12A," Sophie finally caved, before releasing another hopeless sob.

Dean looked at Sam, who looked back at his older brother disapprovingly. "Dean, don't do it. I want to, too, and I get it, but you can't—"

"You get her into the car, get her warm," Dean commanded, before disappearing.

Sam groaned and Sophie cried, and immediately he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her to him. "Don't worry Soph," he told her softly. "Don't worry, it's all okay, everything's going to be fine." He kissed the top of her head and pulled back, looking down at her. "Can you stand?"

Trembling, Sophie shook her head. She didn't have control of any of her extremities, not at that moment.

"That's okay," Sam said softly. He placed one arm behind Sophie's back and one under her sheet-encased knees and lifted her up off of the ground. She burrowed into his chest, shivering and sniffling, as he carried her to the Impala, where he slid into the backseat with her and closed the door, leaning up into the front seat and turning the heat on all the way up. Then he leaned back and pulled Sophie against him, rubbing her shoulders as her shivers gradually became less violent.

After a moment, she looked up at her uncle. "Sam, I'm so—"

He shook his head, kissing the top of her head to shut her up. "I love you, Soph," he told her quietly. "I'm just glad you're safe now."

She nestled into him, slowly starting to feel warm again, and when her trembling finally stopped Sam looked down at her. "I need to go find Dean," he told her.

She knew what that really meant. _I need to go make sure my brother hasn't just committed murder_. So she nodded. "Okay. Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you, too."

He grinned at her, warm hazel eyes filled with a bittersweet emotion. "We'll be right back."

And he left her in the warm car curled up and wondering what on earth her father might have done.

* * *

Dean had felt rage before, but never like this.

He'd never felt the fear of watching his drunk daughter drive away from him and then soon after realizing he had no way of finding her. He'd never felt the helplessness of not knowing where she was, not knowing how to get to her, praying to every force in the universe to keep her safe.

And then the relief of seeing her name on his phone, and then the fear when he'd heard her sobbing across the line, and then the pain that came when he knew she was hurting.

But the anger he'd felt as he pulled into that crap apartment complex and saw her little red head shaking and tucked down into the sheet-bundled ball beneath her, and as he put two and two together…it was all-consuming.

All he could do was stand and stare at her trembling, vulnerable form as Sam tried to coax her into looking at him. And when he'd finally gotten her to put on his shirt, and Dean saw that she didn't have a single article of clothing on her body as she sat out in the thirty degree weather, his unfathomable anger somehow multiplied.

And then her face. When she'd finally lifted her head up and looked at them, Dean didn't even see the tears and blue lips, though those were cause for his murderous hate in and of themselves. He just saw her eyes. And they were broken. Completely and utterly broken.

And that's when the rage had overflowed. Learning that she hadn't actually slept with the guy didn't lessen his rage. In fact, the knowledge that this bastard tossed a scared, unwilling girl out into the cold, naked and freezing, only enraged him further.

So, after getting the room number, Dean left his daughter and brother behind him and tore through the complex, looking for apartment 12A through red-glazed vision. And when he finally found the door, he pounded his fist on it without preamble.

"Hey!" he barked loudly. "Hey asshole! Open the door!" He could hear the slightest shuffling on the other side of the door, and he had a feeling the guy was peering out at him through the peephole. "I know you're there!" Dean yelled. "Open the damn door or I will kick it the hell in!"

The man on the inside finally yelled back at him. "Go away, you lunatic, the homeless shelter's six blocks west of here!"

Dean's eyes narrowed. "I warned you, you worthless dick!" he yelled. And then he shifted his weight all to one foot and launched forward, kicking the door with everything he had. It was an old frame, and it cracked slightly after his first kick. After three more, the frame busted and the door fell open.

Dean immediately walked in to find a man who only looked a little younger than himself standing in his boxers with a butter knife in his hand. Judging by the smoking bowl on his kitchen counter and the overwhelming stench of pot, he was probably high as a kite. And that didn't faze Dean one bit.

"What the hell?" the man said, looking at Dean with fear in his eyes. "How'd you do that?"

Dean said nothing as he took in the high, half naked form of the man in front of him, and then he glanced around the room and felt his body begin to hum with fury as he saw a familiar pair of jeans on the ground, accompanied by a bra and a slightly torn pair of girl's underwear.

He saw red as he advanced towards the man, who tried to scramble away from him, but Dean just grabbed his arm and twisted it sharply so the knife fell out of his hand and onto the floor uselessly. "Dude, what're you doing?" the man yelled.

"First," Dean said in his scarily calm voice, slamming the man face first into the wall, "I'm going to beat the living hell out of you. And then, if you're lucky enough to survive that, I'm going to make a decision as to how I rip off your pervert dick and use it to strangle you until you finally die."

"What'd I ever do to you, you psycho?" the man said through gritted teeth as Dean pushed his face further into the wall.

Dean flipped him around and slammed him back into the wall as hard as he could. "She's _seventeen_!" Dean snarled, and he punched the man right in the jaw.

The man reeled back, holding his jaw and staring at Dean with confused eyes. "What?"

"The girl you just threw out into the freezing cold because she didn't want to have sex with your worthless ass," Dean spat at him. "She's a damn _kid_, you disgusting piece of—"

"What?" the man exclaimed, shocked. "No, no way, that little bitch told me she was a senior, she's studying literature—"

Dean sent his fist into the guy's face again, not caring that the guy was so high he probably couldn't have even attempted to put up a fight. "Try senior in high school, _bitch_," Dean hissed.

The guy grabbed his bleeding nose, and then to Dean's pure ire, he started laughing deliriously. "I almost banged a _high schooler_? For real? God, the guys are going to love hearing about this one, especially when I tell them I screwed her." He spat out some blood and seemed completely oblivious to the murderous rage in Dean's eyes as he kept chuckling. "Which, you know, is close to true. She was just too damn shy and hot, and she was so unsure about everything from the drinks to the kiss to the invitation to go home..."

He laughed again as Dean grit his teeth, trying to hold himself back from cold blooded murder. Before Dean could say anything in reply, the man continued, "Bro, you know what, to be honest, I didn't realize she wasn't totally on board with me holding her down and tearing her clothes off until I had her naked and nervous right underneath me—"

Dean lost it. He couldn't tell up from down or left from right or blood from the red filter that seemed to have fallen over his vision. All that he knew was a raging desire to hurt the man in front of him.

He didn't know how many times he hit the man, didn't know how many times he yelled every obscenity that he'd ever learned at him. All he knew was that his fist was suddenly covered in blood and the man was on the floor, and he had to switch to kicking the bastard because he was no longer conscious, and Dean didn't want to stop, didn't want to spare him, didn't want—

"Dean!"

Suddenly he was being yanked away from the man's fallen body, and in response he launched his fist towards the person holding him. Whoever it was caught his fist deftly and tossed it to the side. "Dean, man, pull yourself together!"

As the red started to dissipate from his vision, he realized it was Sam, and that he'd been pulled away from a bleeding, crumpled form of the man he'd been wailing on. "Dean," Sam said again, trying to get Dean to focus in on him. "Dude, what the hell, if I'd been any later you might've killed him."

"Good," Dean spat shortly.

"Dean," Sam said again in a reprimanding voice. "We should call Cas, see if he can come heal the guy—"

"He said he held her down, Sam," Dean said through gritted teeth. "Even when she told him she wanted him to stop, he _held her down_. My kid. Sophie. Bastard almost forced _my kid_ to…." He stared at the man in disgust and shook his head. "No one does that to my kid and gets a free walk. I ain't letting that go."

A flash of disgust and hatred crossed Sam's face, but it disappeared quickly. "Either way, he's a human person," Sam said in as level a voice as he could manage. "Let's just call an ambulance and get the hell out of here."

"Sam, I don't know about your definition of human person, but he doesn't deserve—"

"It doesn't matter!" Sam snapped. "Look at him! You've done enough. Sophie's in the car waiting, and she shouldn't be alone right now."

Dean took a deep breath, looking back at the bloodied mess of a man on the ground. "Fine," he said gruffly, pulling out his phone and dialing 911. When the operator picked up, all he said was, "Sunny Side Apartments just outside Lebanon, Kansas, apartment 12A. There's an unconscious and worthless dickhead who got what was coming to him and could probably use castration and a couple stitches. Not necessarily in that order." Then he quickly hung up and looked at Sam. "Let's go."

Sam and Dean marched out of the broken door and over to the Impala, which was still running. When they got to it, the brothers exchanged one glance, and then Dean got behind the wheel while Sam slid into the back with Sophie.

The heat was blasting, and Dean's natural reaction was to reach and turn it down, but when he looked back at Sophie, who had already curled back up next to Sam in an attempt to get warmer, he kept it blasting.

He looked at her in the rearview mirror, at the dried tearstains on her cheeks beneath her red eyes.

He didn't regret beating that man to a pulp. Not a bit.

Then she lifted her eyes and made contact with his in the mirror. She held them for a second, and then she buried her head back into Sam's shoulder.

Dean cleared his throat, said nothing, and pulled out of the parking lot.

**This was a hard chapter to write. But what made it better was knowing that this is as low as Sophie can get. From here, she can get back on her feet. So while there will be some heart to hearts and feelings in the next chapter, we'll also finally see some hope.**

**Until next time ~ Lacey :)**


	90. Chapter 90: The Return Of The King

_Chapter 90: The Return of the King_

When they arrived back at the bunker, Sam helped Sophie out of the car, and once she got used to standing on her still-shivering legs, the first thing she did was bolt into her room and jump into a steaming hot shower.

She knew it was useless and cliché, but still, she tried to scrub the night off of her body, as if her bad decisions were as tangible as dirt and grime, even though in reality they were invisible and far more gruesome.

When she finally came to terms with the fact that no matter how much soap and force she applied, what happened with Wes would never un-happen, she turned off the water and got out of the shower.

As quickly as she could, she dried off and donned as many layers of clothing as she could stand. Ten minutes later she emerged from her closet wearing a pair of old sweatpants, a long-sleeve thermal, Sam's huge old Stanford sweatshirt, thick socks, and her favorite slippers. She let her wet hair fall around her shoulders and looked at herself in her bedroom mirror.

Her eyes were lightless. Her lips were pressed into a tight line. Her whole face was sharper than it used to be; she'd lost some of that youthful roundness in her cheeks.

She could just go to bed. She could go to bed and try to shove down everything she had felt before, pretend that what had happened hadn't affected her like it had.

She could reconstruct every wall that had just been torn down; she could burn every damn bridge she had built since climbing out of her grave.

But she thought about her dad. And about Sam. And about Remy and Cas.

Her family deserved more than the version of herself that they'd been getting recently. They deserved someone who could heal. Or at least someone who was willing to try.

So, with hands shaking ever-so-slightly, and this time not from the cold, Sophie left her room and went to seek out her dad and Sam.

She didn't have to look that hard. She found them sitting in the main room, talking in low voices as Dean used a wet rag to wipe blood off of his hands. She tried not to think about what that meant.

When the soft padding of her feet signaled her entry into the room, both Sam and Dean looked up sharply. She stared at them both, suddenly forgetting what she had meant to say.

Sam spoke up. "How're you feeling, Soph?"

She opened her mouth to say _Fine_, but then she froze. Small talk was the last thing she wanted to do right now. She just wanted to be free of the feelings she'd felt that had driven her to go home with Wes, that had driven her to drink and be distant and push her family away.

So instead, she just said, "I'm ready to talk about Hell."

* * *

Dean stared at his daughter.

He stared long and hard.

It was kind of like repeating a word over and over and over again until it lost meaning.

_Hell, Hell, Hell, Hell, Hell…._

Except instead of words, it was his kid and her life and what she went through that seemed to become so incomprehensible.

_Sophie went to Hell. Sophie went to Hell. Sophie went to Hell. Sophie went to Hell. _

Looking at her now, buried underneath warm clothes and looking down at the floor, it was nearly impossible to imagine that anyone could have ever been able to hurt her. That anyone could have seen her and been capable of causing her the level of pain and anguish that he knew she'd experienced.

But he knew in just the span of a moment that he could never show her how at a loss he truly was. Because this was a long time coming. Sophie needed it, he needed it, they all needed it.

And he would be damned if another episode like the one they'd had tonight were ever to repeat itself.

So he just looked at Sam, who had a strange look of relief and dread on his face, and then he sat down at the table. Sam followed suit, and after a tense moment, so did Sophie.

Dean looked at her with what he hoped was encouragement. He knew he'd freaked her out a little bit back at the apartment complex. He couldn't blame her for being a little bit hesitant. He hadn't so much as offered her a single word of comfort since taking her away from there.

But he was still processing his rage at Wes and at the world, and he didn't want that to come off when he spoke to her. So he remained quiet.

Sophie looked at her hands for a moment, her eyes narrowed a little bit, and he could tell that behind her wall of silence, she was thinking a million miles a minute. Then she looked up, looking like she was at a loss.

"I don't know how," she finally said, sounding one part frustrated and one part terrified.

Sam reached over and put a hand on hers, giving it a quick squeeze. "It's okay, there's no right or wrong way to do this," he told her in encouragement. "Do you remember being in the church that day?"

She nodded. "I remember everything," she said, her voice slow and hesitant and soft. "I went because Beelzebub found some way to trick me into thinking you had texted me, Dad, and so I went and he was there."

"Do you remember…when it happened?" Sam asked. Dean glanced at his brother, and he could see how hard it was for him to ask the questions.

It might not have been as hard as it was for Sophie, but Dean had an inkling that this would be hard for the both of them as well.

Sophie nodded. "I just remember thinking…that you two were so close, and that there was no way with you that close that something could actually happen. But then…then you guys all looked kind of…sick and horrified, and then I looked down and saw the blood. Everything's kind of fuzzy after that. But…the next thing I know, I'm standing in this bright space and I'm talking to this really nice woman. She said her name was Tessa."

Sam and Dean exchanged a quick, surprised glance. "Did she have black hair, blue eyes?" Sam asked her.

Sophie frowned. "Um, yeah, she did. How'd you know?"

"She's a reaper," Dean said gruffly. Sophie looked at him tentatively, and he knew it was because those were the first words he'd spoken directly to her since finding her outside of Wes' apartment.

After a moment, Sophie just nodded. "Well, anyway, she wanted me to come with her, and I was about to, but then there was this sound and everything dimmed a bit, and then…this demon stepped in and somehow sent her away. And then he…he pulled me along with him. Into Hell."

"Sonneillon," Dean said.

Her eyes darkened a bit. "You know about him?"

Dean just nodded.

She looked back down at her hands. "Yeah, well, it was him. But he always wanted me to call him Sonny, and he…he called me princess." She went quiet for a moment, collecting her thoughts. Sam and Dean let her. Then she looked back up. "He took me to Hell. I was in this dark room that…I never knew exactly how, but it existed outside of space and shifted its location on its own all the time. Sonny said it was his way of making sure that no one could get to me except for him."

This time, when she went quiet, she didn't start up again on her own. Dean glanced at Sam, who took a small breath and then said, "Soph, I know it's hard, but…."

Sophie could no longer maintain eye contact with either of them. Instead, she kept her eyes glued to her hands, which were knotted together in her lap so tightly that her knuckles were turning white. "He came every day," she said, and Sam and Dean didn't miss how her voice turned somewhat monotonous and robotic. As if she were trying to distance herself from the reality. Which anyone would do when describing the most traumatic experience in their life. "The first five or six years were just…torture. No tricks, no gimmicks, just him slowly taking me apart and putting me back together just in time to tear me apart again. Sonny…he's the only one I ever saw during that time. And while he was torturing me, he would talk to me so conversationally. Like I should've been talking back to him about the weather instead of screaming my lungs out." She took a deep, shaky breath. "I didn't even know it could get worse than that."

She stopped again, taking a couple breaths. When she didn't say anything for nearly a minute, Sam gently prodded, "But it did."

She nodded.

When she still didn't say anything, Sam tried again. "Soph, I know it sucks, but you're already here and we'll stay here as long as it takes for you to finally get it all out, okay?"

She sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. "How is talking even supposed to help me?" she asked in a low voice.

"Because," Sam said. "When you talk about it, a part of you let's go of it. And that's a big step."

She bit her lip for a second and then opened her mouth again. "Okay," she said, and both brothers could tell she'd finally made the decision to keep going. "Okay."

She looked up at the ceiling, like she was searching for words. "After a while," she finally resumed, "I started to… beg Sonny. I mean I always begged him to stop, but after those first years I finally broke down and began to beg him just to end it all. Turn me into a demon, use my soul for whatever diabolical plan he had in mind…I probably would have done anything, just for it to stop. And I guess he listened, because he ended the standard torture. But then it became just…."

Sophie lowered her eyes back to her hands and curled her legs to her body, so that her chin rested softly on her knees. "He…I don't know how, but he was in my mind," she said. "He made me feel…the most fear and most pain I'd ever felt, without even touching me."

She took another deep breath. "That lasted for a while, but then it got worse. He did all the things he did before, the regular torture, but he'd do something to my mind and I'd think it was one of you two doing it to me, and..." She just shook her head, and both Sam and Dean immediately felt awful. "I know it wasn't you, but it just seemed so real at the time, and it was…it was awful seeing one of you hacking me into pieces." She shivered, blinked, and then continued in a low voice, "Sometimes he made me think my mom was there," she whispered. "Except it wasn't her, it was him, but I just didn't know…."

"They do that," Dean said, watching her closely as she struggled to find words. "They don't want you to distinguish fiction from reality. They want it all to be real and want it all to hurt."

She just nodded. "Well, they did a damn good job of it."

This time, when she fell silent for a long time, Sam didn't prompt her to keep going. He knew she would talk, eventually. She needed time, and patience, and compassion, and that's what they were going to give her.

And after a few minutes, she spoke up again. "Beelzebub came down after a while, to oversee things. I guess my soul wasn't corrupting fast enough for his liking. So…he made me think I was free," she whispered. "Every day would start the same, end horribly, and then restart the next day. I'd wake up, and I was back here and you two had saved me. And then…terrible things would happen. It'd be impossible for me to go through all the scenarios, but it started with things happening to the people I love. You two would show up dead, or you'd get possessed and start torturing me, or you'd tell me I was a waste of space and send me back to live with Steve. And it wasn't just you two. Cas, Remy, Jamie, Harry. My mom. All of you." She shook her head. "And…and Jack.

Dean leaned forward. "I heard you in your sleep the other night," he said in a low voice. "You said his name, and you sounded scared."

Sophie nodded. Both Sam and Dean watched as she took another deep breath, gritted her teeth together, and closed her eyes. "He made me think that Jack was…hurting me."

"Hurting you," Sam repeated. It wasn't necessarily phrased as a question, but it left the window open for Sophie to elaborate.

And then tears started falling from her eyes, like a dam in her mind had busted open and now everything, all of her feelings and memories and experiences…they were all up for grabs, out there and available to anyone who wanted to see them. She immediately started trying to wipe them all away, but they kept coming, like she was some sort of unfixable, leaking faucet of a human. "I can't say it," she whispered. "But you know."

Dean closed his eyes, unable to look at the expression on her face, like she'd just lost some sort of battle. Like she thought he might be angry at her or ashamed of her. But that was so far from the truth; even though he knew he couldn't, all Dean wanted was to somehow force it into her mind that he couldn't be more proud of her.

Sophie was right. He'd known, in a deep, quiet part of his heart. He'd known she had to have experienced that kind of torture in Hell. The universe's Mecca of torture would use every weapon of pain in its armory, and there was no method of inflecting pain and anguish that was off limits.

He would know that better than anyone.

But admitting it, taking the steps necessary to let go of it…that was courage. That was courage Dean had never had.

But Sophie had it. Of course she did. Dean could run headfirst into a vampire nest or demon war or all-out battle between Heaven and Hell…but if he was honest with himself, Sophie was braver.

Regardless, it was still hard to hear it, hard to see it tearing her apart. Dean's head was bowed down slightly, still unable to look at her. "Soph…."

Sophie cut him off. "It's stupid," she said softly, in almost a whisper, "because some of those other things that Sonny and Beelzebub did to me, some of their other tortures…they were worse. They were _infinitely _worse. If I learned anything in Hell, it's that there are things far worse than…than _that_. Especially since it wasn't even real, it was all in my head. But…."

More tears started to fall. "But no other part of Hell changed the way I thought about a person. With you two, now that I'm out, I know you're not going to hurt me like you did in Hell. And I know Cas and Remy won't. But I don't know, with Jack it's just…he was the little bit of normal that I had, and I was already so insecure around him, and after Hell…. I can't help but not want to be around him…. And I feel awful, because I hurt him so much, and he's been nothing but perfect to me, and he doesn't even know why I've acted the way I have, and I can't possibly explain…."

Before Sam or Dean could say anything, Sophie just wiped away the rest of her tears and choked out a soft and derisive laugh, without an ounce of humor. "Kinda funny that I can't deal with Jack so much as starting a conversation with me, but I can go home with a stranger no problem."

Silence fell between them like a heavy curtain. Sophie retreated back into her own mind, and Sam and Dean sat there and tried to formulate some sort of response to her admission.

Eventually, Sam seemed to find the words he was looking for. "Sophie," he said in a level voice, with enough force to make her look up at him, surprised at his tone. "Listen to me when I say this: we're going to kill them. We're going to rip them apart. The both of them, Sonneillon and Beelzebub. They're going to regret every single thing they ever did to you."

Sophie just looked at her uncle, no idea how to respond. Those words, said in such a harsh and unswerving way, wouldn't have meant much coming from Dean, whose general disposition was to kill anything that ever so much as said a mean word to Sophie. Sam, on the other hand, rarely displayed such direct and palpable rage.

Eventually she just nodded. Words wouldn't suffice for how she felt.

Sam nodded back, glancing at Dean, whose eyes were still closed, jaw taut with some purposefully hidden emotion. He looked back at Sophie. "Do you remember getting broken out of Hell?" he finally asked.

Sophie thought about her uncle's words and said slowly, "I… don't know."

Sam looked confused, and Dean finally opened his eyes again. "You don't know?"

Sophie's eyebrows knit themselves together in thought. "It's kind of all fuzzy to me. It was like a regular day of torture. I woke up thinking you two had saved me from Hell and we were alright, and then everything started getting blown to crap. I had just watched you get slaughtered by Cas in front of my eyes, Sam, and you, Dad, you just refused to talk to me…. And before anything else happened, there was this huge bright white cloud that just seemed to come out of nowhere, and I thought I heard…."

She closed her eyes, thinking hard. After a moment, Sam asked, "Heard what, Soph?"

"Fire," she said, opening up her eyes again. "Like the whole world was going up in flames." Sam and Dean watched her take the biggest breath she'd taken all night, and finally she sat back in her chair, letting her feet touch the ground again while her arms fell to her sides, relaxed. "And then I woke up in my grave."

She sat there, looking at her hands, unable to say another word. But even though she was mute, she felt…_free_. As much as it felt like tearing off the world's largest and strongest bandage, her wounds were now out in the open, getting fresh air and on their way, finally, to recovering.

Sam seemed to notice that she was done talking, because he reached over and took one of her hands like he had when she started talking, squeezing it lightly. "Soph," Sam said, "there's no other way to say this that doesn't make it sound cliché…but we're proud of you."

She gave a little laugh, looking back at him. "Even though I got arrested?"

Sam offered her a small grin. "Even though you got arrested."

She glanced at Dean, who was looking at her intently. It was still impossible to get a hold on how he was feeling. But her anxiety lessened a little when he just nodded, and gruffly said, "He's right. You did good, kiddo."

Sophie meant to say something back to him, but it got lost in the yawn that came over her suddenly. As she covered her mouth, Sam stood up. "Alright," he said briskly. "You're done for tonight. C'mon, you're going to bed."

"'Kay," she said through another yawn.

As Sam put a hand on her shoulder and began to lead her away towards her room, though, she paused and stepped away from him. She turned back around and saw Dean standing by his seat, looking at her with a tired, sad expression on his face.

She quickly walked back towards him and, before she even knew what she was doing or what she was going to say, he immediately pulled her into a short, tight hug. She hugged him back, not remembering the last time she'd had anything close to resembling a chick flick moment with her father.

When he broke the hug, he kept his hands on her shoulders and pulled her in for a quick kiss on her forehead. "Love you, kiddo," he told her in a coarse voice.

She looked up at him, and for the first time since breaking down back at Wes' apartment and finally telling Sam and Dean about Hell, she felt relief. She felt the biggest weight being lifted from her shoulders, like the cold iron grasp of darkness was slowly fading from her heart. "Love you, too," she said under her breath. Then she gave him a tiny grin and turned around, walking back to Sam, letting him lead her to her room, as if letting her go on her own would end in her running off again.

It didn't bother her. She knew it was going to take some time to build back up the trust she'd undoubtedly broken between her and her family.

But now she was ready to fix it.

Months after her resurrecting from the dead, she was finally, actually back.

* * *

For three glorious seconds, Sophie didn't remember what had happened the night before when she woke up the following morning.

But when those three seconds were over, she felt a crushing self-disgust and overwhelming regret, and even though she didn't, she felt like crying all over again.

She sat up in her bed, staring at the oversized sweatpants she was wearing as well as the long-sleeved shirt. Her head felt heavy and her throat hurt, and she had a feeling she was experiencing the beginnings of a bitching cold. But even though she felt like crap right now, she had slept like a baby. Once she'd crawled into bed, she'd been out like a light.

Now that she was awake, she couldn't avoid reality. She pulled herself out of bed and walked to her bathroom, where she washed her face and pulled her hair into a ponytail. She had slightly puffy eyes from crying so much the night before, but she was just happy that her shirt covered all of the hickeys she knew she probably had.

She knew she couldn't avoid it any longer. So she finally inhaled sharply, redid her ponytail one last time, and then walked out of the door.

When she got to the kitchen, she froze in the doorway. Dean was sitting at the kitchen table, an empty cup of coffee in his hands, staring at the coffee pot on the counter in a listless fashion. When he looked over and saw her, she immediately looked down. Other than figuring out where Wes was so he could beat him up, and other than his moment of softness once she'd finally told them about Hell, Dean hadn't said much anything to her the night before. He'd just had a scary look on his face the whole time, one that Sophie couldn't really look at.

But something made her look up at him again, and he was still just looking at her, observing her, as if he could determine her mental state just by his sense of sight.

She leaned against the doorway. "I don't think I can live with myself if you hate me, Dad," she told him in a subdued voice.

His eyes widened a little bit. Clearly he hadn't expected those to be the first words out of her mouth. "Why would you think I hate you?"

She made a little scoffing noise in the back of her throat. "Because I've been the worst person ever for the past month or so? Drinking and being stupid and…and then last night…. I mean, I hate me, too. Like, a lot."

Immediately, his gaze softened, and he stood up from his chair to refill his mug. "It's impossible for me to hate you, kiddo," he told her.

She immediately took a few steps forward and almost knocked Dean over with her hug. He chuckled a little in surprise and then wrapped his arms around her, giving her a tight squeeze. "I really am sorry," she said quickly. "For being such a bitch and testing your patience and doing such stupid stuff. Even if you did hate me, no one could hate me more than I hate myself."

His arms tightened around her a little more before he let go of her and grabbed another mug out of the cupboard. "Look, you might've gone home with that asshole, and that's on you, but everything after…you should hate him more than yourself, got it?"

She sighed as Dean filled her mug with coffee. "Wouldn't you be mad, too, if the girl you took home decided halfway into you tearing all her clothes off that she didn't want to sleep with you?"

Dean tried to burn the mental image of anyone tearing Sophie's clothes off out of his mind, knowing he couldn't just push this conversation to the side, especially since it was the first Sophie had really talked to him in a long, long time. "Well, sure, I'd be a little bit upset. But what he did, once you said no…he's a pathetic, spineless douche, Soph. I mean, Jesus, how old was he anyway?"

"You don't want to know."

He didn't push her, mostly because he really didn't want to know, instead just offering her the coffee, and she took it quietly. She sipped on it for a moment, closing her eyes in contentment. And then she sneezed.

Some of the coffee spilled over onto the floor and onto her shirt, and she just stared at it for a moment. Then she sneezed again, and more coffee fell onto the floor, leaving less than half the amount in her cup.

She looked up at her dad, who just looked at her in surprise, and she held out her cup to him. "More, please."

He chuckled despite himself, grabbing her cup. "How about I clean this up, you change, and then we'll go into town and grab medicine for the cold you're inevitably going to have after last night."

She sighed. "Fine." She started to walk out, and then she paused. "Where's Sam?"

Dean shrugged. "At the hospital checking to make sure I didn't properly kill that asshole like I wanted to," he said in a careless tone.

Sophie looked at him in surprise. "You shouldn't have done tha—"

"Too bad, I did," he said gruffly. "Now get dressed, okay, we're leaving in ten."

She gave him a stern look. "I'm serious, Dad. It wasn't all his fault," she said disapprovingly. "I went with him. And...not that I'm proud of it, but I mean, I went along with a lot of it, it wasn't like he dragged me there and—"

"Soph," Dean interjected sharply. "I don't care if you guys had sex a thousand times, the one time you don't want to do something, he sure as hell shouldn't be trying to make you do it. End of discussion," Dean said stiffly. Then he reconsidered. "That's a lie, I would care if you had sex a thousand times. I'd care a lot, and I probably would've just shot him, to be honest."

She cracked a grin. "Alright, Papa Bear. Well…thanks. I think."

Just seeing her grin at him was enough to make him do the same. "Thank me by never scaring me like you did last night ever again."

She grinned again, but this time in a more somber way. "I'm moving on from that," she said, sounding sure of herself. "I have to."

"Glad to hear it, kiddo," Dean told her. "Now go get dressed. With a long-sleeved shirt. And a sweater. And maybe even a scarf."

Sophie gave him a look. "The cold front passed, it should be like fifty degrees outside right now."

"I want to see a sweater on your body when you come out the door, Soph, _capiche_?"

She rolled her eyes. "Yes, mother."

"Atta girl."

She retreated into her room as Dean grabbed a paper towel and quickly swiped up all of the coffee that Sophie had spilt. Then he grabbed her travel mug out of the cupboard, filled it to the top with coffee, and was just screwing on the lid as Sophie came back into the room, her hair tied into a braid down her back and her hands quickly tugging down a Lebanon Central sweatshirt that she'd just pulled over her head.

Dean gave her a look. "That's not warm enough."

Sophie just rolled her eyes, albeit while grinning, and waved her phone in the air. "The weather app says its fifty-five degrees outside, Dad. It's practically balmy." Before he could retaliate, she grabbed the coffee mug from his hands. "Thanks for this."

He was about to say something along the lines of how he was going to ban her from coffee a day for every time she rolled her eyes at him, but then she sneezed again. Luckily, the coffee was tightly concealed in the mug in her hands, so no mess was made. But after sneezing, Sophie promptly began coughing, and she had to set the mug down on the counter to cover her mouth.

Dean frowned and grabbed the coffee mug back. "Alright, patient zero, let's go get those meds."

Sophie looked at the mug and then back at him sharply. "Gimme."

"Nope," he said, holding the mug out of snatching distance. "When we get back, I'm knocking you out with NyQuil and you're gonna sleep this cold away before it can get any worse."

"I'm not even that—" Whatever she wasn't, Dean never found out, because her words were cut off by yet another bout of coughing.

"Yeah, okay, sure. Leave the coffee and come on."

"But Dad," she whined, giving him her usually effective pouty face. "If I don't have coffee I'll go into withdrawal."

"Nope, those pretty little eyes ain't gonna work today, sweetheart," Dean said, looking for his keys in his pocket. "Now c'mon, the sooner we get the meds the better chance I have of not getting infected by you."

"It's always about you, isn't it," she grumbled, but she left the coffee on the counter and followed Dean out to the Impala. He made a show of staying at least five feet away from her at all times, and she gave an exasperated groan. "Oh my God, Dad, I'm not going to infect you!"

"You better not," Dean responded, glancing back at an annoyed Sophie and grinning.

"What?" she asked at his look.

"Nothing," he said. He didn't really know how to tell her how glad he was that she was starting to come back to life, finally. So he just shook his head. "Nothing. Just get in the car."

"So pushy," she sighed, before opening up the passenger door and sliding into the car.

He chuckled, let out a long breath, and then followed suit.

* * *

Later that afternoon, as Sophie slept in a haze of cold medicine, Dean was glued to his laptop.

It was now several long, hard weeks after Sophie's miracle return from the pit, and they still had no idea how the hell she'd managed to escape Hell. If Dean had any hope of keeping Beelzebub and his bitch Sonneillon away from Sophie, and if he had any hope of finding out just how to wipe the two evil bastards off the face of the planet, he had a feeling he needed to figure out just how Sophie was saved.

He was so absorbed in his research that he didn't even hear Sam enter the bunker and make his way over to Dean until he heard him say, "Where's Sophie?"

Dean looked up in surprise, and upon seeing it was just Sam, he relaxed. "Sleeping. She's sick as a dog."

Sam nodded. "Doesn't surprise me," he said. Then he glanced down at the laptop. "What're you doing?"

Dean squinted at the screen, his head starting to hurt from looking at it for hours. "What we should've been doing for weeks. Trying to figure out how the hell Soph's even alive."

Sam nodded, expression falling a bit. "Yeah. I've been doing a little digging too, but so far there's nothing."

"Yeah, well, I haven't found jack squat either," Dean exhaled.

Sam nodded again, then he cleared his throat. "Wes is fine, in case you were wondering."

"Wes?" Dean asked distractedly as his gaze returned to the laptop.

"The guy you punched out last night," Sam told him.

Dean's eyes narrowed, and he was suddenly acutely aware of the bruises aching on his hand. "I prefer him without a name."

"Yeah, well, he has one," Sam told him. "And he feels so bad about what happened last night he doesn't even want to press charges."

"_Press charges_?" Dean exclaimed, his laptop now forgotten. "That son of a bitch is the one who should be worried about legal action! She's a minor!"

"Pretty sure almost killing a guy warrants more legal action than two people almost but not actually sleeping together," Sam said. When Dean opened his mouth to protest, Sam cut him off. "Look, it doesn't matter. He's healing up fine enough, and he said he never would have touched her if he'd known she was that young."

"That's not what he told me," Dean said through gritted teeth, thinking back to Wes' laughing face from the night before, taunting Dean by saying he couldn't wait to tell his friends that he'd screwed a high schooler.

"Yeah, well, he was high then, so I don't think that counts," Sam said. "Look, I'm not trying to make you angrier, and I don't want to defend him. I wanted to beat the crap out of him just as much as you. I'm just telling you that we don't need to worry about him."

Dean forced himself to calm down. "Fine," he said. "Fine." He paused for a while, then asked, "Is he in a lot of pain?"

Sam shrugged. "He's pretty drugged up right now, but I imagine once those wear off he'll be hurting."

"Good."

Sam gave Dean a look, and then decided to just drop it. "How long has Sophie been out?"

Dean glanced at the time on his computer. "Maybe two hours."

Sam nodded. "Maybe she'll sleep all the way through the night."

"Wouldn't kill her," Dean muttered, looking back at his laptop as he scrolled through some university's database on ancient resurrection myths.

Sam sat down next to Dean. "Last night was good," he said after a moment. Dean looked at him like he was insane. "Well, not the stuff with Wes, obviously," he amended quickly. "I meant the fact that she finally talked to us."

Dean looked at Sam in the eye, and then he turned away. "Yeah," he said under his breath.

Sam picked up on his tone immediately. "We knew," he said after a moment. "We knew that those bastards put her through the ringer. But hearing it was…."

Dean just nodded. He didn't feel like talking about what had happened to Sophie any more than she wanted to talk about it.

Sam, however, couldn't seem to shut up about it. "Dean, I think she could benefit from some real help."

Dean just snorted as he clicked a link on the browser that he was sure would lead to yet another dead end. "Sam, any therapist worth their salt would commit her if she actually told them everything she's been through. And I don't know of any shrinks that specialize in hunter-related trauma."

"I know," Sam said, shaking his head. "I'm just saying, talking to us was a good start, but she could use an objective third party helping her out."

Dean exhaled and looked up. "I'm not disagreeing with you. Just…right not isn't good. She's doing okay for now. The worst is over. The best thing we can do for her right now is be there for her when she wants to talk, and in the meantime, figure out how the hell we can finally ice these dickbags."

"Fair enough," Sam exhaled. He sat back in the chair, looking over at Dean. "You know…there's one person who might have an idea of how Sophie got out of Hell."

Dean glanced at Sam and read his expression, and he immediately shook his head. "No. No freaking way."

"Look, I know we've had our differences with Crowley—"

"Well, yeah, Sam, I admit I don't always see eye to eye with the freaking King of Hell!"

"—but he's useful," Sam continued. "And I don't think I need to tell you that we're sort of desperate."

Dean scowled. "You know, sometimes I think we forget that Crowley is responsible for the deaths of people we loved."

"I never forget that," Sam said in a low voice. "I think about them all the time. Jo, Ellen…. But I also will never forget seeing Sophie dead on that church floor. Jo and Ellen are already dead, and somehow Soph isn't. We can't waste that."

"I know," Dean said. "I know. I just hate that stupid European bastard."

"Yeah, well, I'm not the president of his fan club either," Sam grumbled. He stood up. "Let's do it now."

"No, not while Sophie's here—"

"She'll probably be out for a while, and the sooner we get a jump on this, the better," he said firmly. "Every second we waste is a second Beelzebub can use to find Sophie again."

Dean looked like he wanted to argue, but then he just released an annoyed groan and closed the laptop. "Fine," he snapped. "Let's get this over with."

* * *

Ten minutes later, they were down in the basement with all of the ingredients necessary for summoning the King of Hell. Dean looked over at Sam as he prepared the bowl of strange herbs and bones. "Any day now, Sammy," he said, antsy.

"Relax, I'm almost done," Sam said under his breath. He double checked that the Devil's Trap was in place, and then he stepped back from the bowl. "You wanna do the honors, or me?"

Dean extended his arms in a familiar gesture, and Sam rolled his eyes before stepping up and pushing his arms out as well.

In unison, they said, "Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!"

"Dammit!" Dean grumbled, clenching the hand that had two fingers up into a fist.

Sam just smirked. "Dude, you need a new strategy."

"Bitch," Dean snapped as he grabbed a pocket knife out of his jacket and extended his palm over the bowl. He made a swift cut on his palm and let the blood fall into the bowl in front of him. It sparked, and a few moments later, there was a cracking sound and then Crowley stood before them, looking annoyed.

"Squirrel. Moose," he drawled slowly. "Now might be the appropriate time to tell you that I have a cell phone. And I happen to know you have my number. I know this because I have a personalized ring tone for each of you, and I quite like hearing them. Or, at the very least, I would prefer to hear them over being yanked from my beauty rest after a particularly long, hard day of work!"

"Just shut up," Sam shot at him in exasperation. "We just have a couple questions for you."

Crowley put his hands in his pockets. "I'm sure I have answers. For the correct price."

Sam looked like he wanted to fight the demon on that, but Dean jumped in. "Whatever, Crowley. We just need to know how Sophie got out of Hell."

Crowley raised an eyebrow. "Yes, I heard that your small, pretty offspring managed to find a way out of Sonneillon's grasp. Lucky for her. Sonneillon's grasp is not a place where one generally wants to be."

"Do you know who busted her out?" Dean asked loudly.

Crowley looked at him carefully. "Why is that so important?" he asked after a moment. "She's alive now, isn't she? What difference does it make _how_ that came to be?"

"Because we need to figure out how to kill Beelzebub and Sonneillon, and any other member of the First Hierarchy that might get in our way," Dean said in a low voice. "And finding the guy with the firepower to pull her out of the pit would be a good start to doing that."

Crowley considered what he said. "Well, Squirrel, I hate to break it to you, but no one knows how the bloody hell Sophie Winchester escaped the likes of Beelzebub and Sonneillon. They tend to sink their claws unnaturally deep in their prey and are quite difficult to persuade to let go—"

"Someone has to know," Sam cut him off. "That kind of operation is too big to escape all of Hell's notice."

Crowley shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you, Moose, I looked into it and whoever it was left no trace."

Sam and Dean exchanged a glance. "So you don't know anything," Sam said in a slightly defeated tone.

Crowley frowned. "I know many things. I even know advanced linear algebra, which generally comes as quite a shock to people when they first learn—"

Dean turned around. "Send him back to Hell, Sammy, we don't have time to listen to him try to be cute."

"Now, Dean, that's not the way you should talk to the kind, generous soul who happens to know just how to kill a member of the First Hierarchy."

At that, both Sam and Dean turned around and stared at the King of Hell. "Excuse me?" Dean asked, eyes narrowed.

Crowley grinned. "I see I've finally captured your attention."

**Guys wow this story is 90 chapters long right now. I've never ever ever ever come even close to writing something this long, or had a story planned out like this one. And it's because of your lovely support and encouragement. So thanks.**

**Just as a heads up, this semester of school is some new circle of hell for me. Because of this, I might be missing some Saturday updates so that I can read/write papers/make sure I sleep enough hours to keep myself alive. I hope this isn't too debilitating of a disappointment. Know that I'm still writing at every spare opportunity, and will get updates out to you as soon as humanly possible.**

**If all goes as planned, this story will be wrapping up in early summer. I know, I'm sad, too.**

**But I'll always be writing.**

**Yours in all things Supernatural, ~ Lacey :)**


	91. Chapter 91: Sick And Tired And A Virgin

_Chapter 91: Sick And Tired And A Virgin_

"I see I've finally captured your attention."

Dean's face was unreadable. "Crowley, if you're yanking our chain, I swear to God, I'm going to—"

"Empty threats bore me, Dean," Crowley sighed, rolling his eyes. "I'm telling the truth, there's a way to kill those pesky First Hierarchy rebels. I've been looking into it for months."

Sam took a step forward. "Then tell us," he demanded. "You want them dead just as much as we do, and you know we'll get it done, so just tell us—"

"Ah ah," Crowley said, eyes glinting. "I've done you boys enough favors when it comes to your little redheaded ward. I'm not in the habit of handing out my services for free, unless my services are of a carnal nature and there is a beautiful woman involved." He looked thoughtful for a moment, and then asked, "How old is Sophie, again?"

"I would gut you," Dean growled.

"See, _that _was yanking your chain, Dean. Goodness, you're quite touchy nowadays."

Dean was running out of patience. "If you don't tell us how the hell to kill Beelzebub and all his bitches you're going to find out just how _touchy_ I am."

Crowley let out a _tsk_ing sound and glanced at Sam. "If you don't keep a muzzle on your darling older brother you're going to find out just how much I dislike being summoned by you two."

Sam tossed Dean a warning look and then turned his attention back to Crowley. "What do you want?"

Crowley examined his fingernails closely. "I need you to see a guy about a thing."

"Good, there's nothing I love more than vague details," Dean scowled.

Crowley straightened up. "There's a box," he started. "It's quite ancient, and has Greek and Enochian symbols carved into it. It's currently being guarded by a gaggle of dragons."

Sam and Dean just stared at him. "A _gaggle_?" Dean repeated incredulously.

"Yes, a gaggle, a gaggle," Crowley said impatiently. "Are you dense or something?"

Dean fought the urge to roll his eyes. "And you need us to get this mysterious box because…?"

"Because I have better things to do than involve myself with dragons, because I have a particular quarrel with the head dragon for reasons you don't need to concern yourselves with, and because you have the sword that is needed to kill the damned buggers," Crowley said. Then he looked at them with a keen eye. "If you need more encouragment, that box is absolutely crucial to killing Beelzebub and Sonneillon."

Sam and Dean exchanged another glance, trying to nonverbally communicate. Dean turned his head back to Crowley. "Where's this…_gaggle _of dragons?"

"The Devil's own favorite city," Crowley said with a smile. "New Orleans."

Before Sam or Dean could respond, there was a soft shuffling behind them. Before they could whirl around, they saw Crowley's grin broaden. "Well good morning, Baby Squirrel!"

At that, Sam and Dean did manage to turn around, and there stood Sophie, in pajama shorts, a track T-shirt, and slippers, her hair sticking up slightly in one spot from where she'd likely slept on it. Dean took her in, with her flushed face and glazed eyes, and realized her cold was a whole lot worse than he'd originally thought.

She looked at Crowley, rubbed her eyes, and then looked again. Then her gaze landed on Sam. "Why," she asked in a tired, exasperated voice, "is the King of Hell in our basement?"

"He might be able to help us find a way to kill Beelzebub," Sam responded truthfully.

Sophie just looked back at Crowley, who was watching her like she was a fascinating test subject of some sort. "What does that have to do with New Orleans?" she finally asked.

Before Sam could reply, Dean stepped in. "Soph, just go back to bed, okay?"

In response, she took another step forward. "No, I want to know what's going on," she said. "Especially if it involves him."

"See, the girl wants to be involved," Crowley chimed in. "I say let her."

"Just shut up, Crowley," Dean barked. Then he glared at Sophie. "I'm serious, go to bed, you're dead on your feet."

"I think she knows what being dead on her feet feels like, Squirrel," Crowley pointed out. "Been there, done that, bought the lifetime of traumatic memories. Am I right, love?"

"Hey!" Sam snapped at Crowley. "If you want us to be doing _any _favors for you, you don't get to talk with her like that!"

"Favor?" Sophie repeated, ignoring her family's attempts to defend her and crossing her arms over her chest. "Why are we doing the King of Hell favors?"

Dean let out an exasperated noise and glared at Sam. "This is why I wanted to wait until she wasn't here to summon Crowley," he grunted.

"Well I'm here," Sophie cut back in. "So you might as well just tell me what's going on. Preferably without referring to me in third person and pretending I can't hear you."

Sam and Dean hesitated, glancing at each other yet again. In their silence, however, Crowley cut in. "I know how to kill the two demons who took you apart limb from limb down in Hell," he said briskly, "and I was just telling the two imbeciles you have the misfortune to be raised by that if they do a favor for me, we'll be right on track for ridding the universe of the First Hierarchy."

Sophie's eyes widened. "Are you serious?" she breathed.

"I'm always serious, love," Crowley said matter-of-factly.

"Actually kill him?" Sophie asked. "Not, like, the fake killing that seems to happen all the time in this world, where someone can get killed and then somehow un-die."

Crowley chuckled. "I can assure you, this would spell the end of Beelzebub."

"How?" she asked.

"Well," Crowley drawled, "as long as your moronic father and uncle make the trip to the Big Easy and do what I told them to do, you'll find out soon enough."

Sophie turned to her dad and Sam, eyes wide. Before she could say anything, Dean shook his head. "Soph, go upstairs."

"Dad," she started heatedly, "I'm a part of this—"

"Unfortunately, yeah, that's true, and we can talk about it later," he allowed. "But you're sick and you're within five feet of the King of Hell, and I'm not okay with that, so I need you to get your ass upstairs, got it?"

She looked like she wanted to argue, but when she opened her mouth she started coughing uncontrollably. She had to put on hand on the wall to steady herself, and Sam was about to walk up and help her stay upright when she finally quieted back down.

Without another word, she looked at Dean in defeat and sighed, giving Crowley one last look before turning around and making her way back up the stairs.

"You really have quite charming spawn, Squirrel," Crowley said, sounding surprised. "And a looker as well. I assume you've been prying all the young gents off of her."

"You don't know the half of it," he grumbled under his breath. Then his eyes narrowed. "You don't get to say she's a looker, Crowley. No damn way."

Crowley just shrugged. "My sexual appetite requires older, much more experienced beings, Dean. Don't waste your useless male bravado on me."

Sam cut them off. "Look, Crowley, just tell us whatever the hell we need to do and we'll do it. But if you're screwing us over, and we fight freaking dragons for some stupid dead end, we're not going to forget."

"Sounds like a deal, Moose," Crowley allowed. "The dragons run a pawn shop in New Orleans called The Hoard." Sam snorted at that, and Crowley continued. "I'm not sure how many of them there are, at most ten, but they've been there for centuries, maybe even millennia. I haven't the foggiest as to where the box actually is, but it belongs to them. So, find them, find the box, bring it back here unharmed…and we're one step closer to ridding the world of those damn First Hierarchy fraternity brothers that think they're capable of releasing and killing the Devil himself."

Dean looked at Crowley through narrowed eyes. "Find the dragons, find the box…and what? Just bring it back to you?"

"That's exactly what you do," he said shortly. "Like it or not, Dean, we're on the same team for this particular matchup. Once Beelzebub is nothing more than an unpleasant memory…then we can go back to desiring each others' demises. Agreed?"

Dean searched Crowley's face, trying to find a hint of deception. After a moment, he decided that even if Crowley did intend to screw them over, Dean would never be able to figure it out until it was too late. And honestly, he didn't have much of a choice. They needed Beelzebub dead, at almost any cost.

"Agreed."

* * *

Sophie was sitting on her bed, blowing her nose with a tissue from one of the three boxes of Kleenex that Dean had purchased when they went out to get medicine for her. She felt awful. Her throat was sore, her head hurt, and she couldn't breathe through her nose.

She'd never gotten so sick so fast, but she guessed that was a natural consequence of not sleeping or eating properly for months, drinking far too much alcohol, and then sitting out in freezing weather with no clothes on for an hour or so.

She had just tossed her tissue into the garbage can and reached for another one when someone knocked on the door.

"Enter at your own risk!" she called out in a highly congested voice.

The knob turned and in stepped both her dad and her uncle. When he saw her face mostly covered by a tissue, Sam frowned. "You look awful," he noted.

"Thanks, Sam, you're a real pick-me-up," she groaned. She threw her tissue away, revealing a red nose, and looked at Dean. "What's the deal with Crowley?"

"We can worry about that later, Rudolph, right now I'm a little more concerned with you," Dean said, walking over and unceremoniously grabbing her head with his hands. She tried to wriggle away from him to no avail, and he quickly placed the back of his left hand on her forehead. She made a whining sound, and after a moment he let out a low whistle before letting her go. "You're burning up."

"Yeah, well, I'm sick. So big surprise," she said grumpily, smoothing her hair down from where his hands had accidentally messed it up. "Last time I checked my temperature was a little over a hundred, it's not like I'm about to spontaneously combust."

She watched Sam glance at Dean. "We can't leave her here alone like this while we go to New Orleans."

Sophie immediately perked up. "We're going to New Orleans?"

"_We're _not going anywhere," Dean said, throwing Sam a sharp glare. "Sam and I are going to New Orleans. You're staying here."

"Dad," she whined.

"We're hunting dragons, Soph," he said plainly. "You're not getting involved."

Sophie's eyes widened. "Dragons? They exist?" she asked. Then her lips curled into a smile. "That's so cool! You have to let me go! Please?"

Dean gave her a stern look. "It's not _cool, _Soph. You know what dragons like to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Virgins. And don't get me wrong, I'm really happy we can stamp that label on your forehead, but there's no way in hell you're getting within a hundred miles of those bastards."

"C'mon, Dad!" she exclaimed, but before she could continue with her complaint she started coughing so hard she was sure a blood vessel would pop in her head.

Sam turned to Dean. "We can't leave her like this," he reiterated.

"We'll get Remy to babysit," Dean said sharply. "She's not coming."

"Dad, you can't leave me here," she said in a croaking voice. "I don't…." She coughed another couple of times, and then continued. "I don't trust myself yet. What if I do something stupid?"

"Stupid like what?"

She coughed again, and then held up a finger and made them wait while she blew her nose again. When she could talk again, she looked up with nervous eyes. "I was able to keep it from you guys for the most part, until the end, but…I've sort of been perpetually drunk for the past month or so. Mason and I…we kinda drank together every day at school. And I already feel like I should be drinking again, not because I need to drown out anything, but just because…I don't know, I guess because my body's used to it."

Sam frowned. "Are you saying that you're a seventeen-year-old alcoholic?"

Her eyes narrowed a bit. "I'm saying that I don't trust myself yet. And if you think Remy will be so good at babysitting me, why don't you ask him why he let me get away with everything I got away with for the last few weeks? Because he'll tell you the truth, and that's that I got really good at finding out how to throw him off."

Dean just stared at her. She was a kid suffering from the flu while also dealing with the trauma of Hell, and now she was potentially a recovering alcoholic. She'd gone through too much in too short a time span.

And he hated to admit it, but he didn't know if he trusted her either. Not yet, at least.

He didn't want her out of his sight. But he also didn't want her within snagging reach of dragons.

He muttered a curse word. "I'll think about it, okay? We won't leave till the morning anyway. For now, you just keep your ass in bed and try to sleep, got it?"

"Dad—"

"Sophie. I'll think about it. So take another shot of NyQuil and sleep!"

She sighed, grumbling something about how the fact that he called it a shot of Nyquil instead of a dose said a lot about his personality, and then laid back against the pillows and on top of her comforter. She curled up into a ball, and just as Dean was about to make his retort to her grumblings, she started hacking again, her whole body wracked with her coughs.

Dean looked at her and exhaled, his sarcastic response dying on his tongue as pity gripped him. "Do you need me to get you anything?" he conceded.

Through her coughing fit and fever-filled eyes, she shot him an amused glance. "A puppy, please."

Dean snorted. "Dream on, sweetheart."

She sighed. "In that case, tea with a boatload of honey. And can you turn the air up? It's super hot in here."

He nodded. "That, I can do."

He left, leaving Sophie with Sam, who walked over and sat on the edge of her bed. "Feel better, Soph, okay?"

She nodded. "I'll pass the message along to my severely compromised immune system."

He grinned. "You do that." He gently kissed the top of her head, frowning slightly when he felt the heat from her body through her hair. "You really are warm," he told her.

"It's a fever, Sam, it'll pass," she told him with a small smile. "All things considered, I'm kind of lucky if a fever is all I get after months of treating myself like crap."

He gave her a sad smile. "Only you would call that _lucky_."

She shrugged. "I'm trying this new thing where I try to be obnoxiously optimistic instead of the other way around."

He chuckled. "Good. Life's better that way. Or so I've heard," he said. He gave her another little smile. "Rest up, 'kay? Whether or not you come with us tomorrow, you could stand to sleep for another twelve hours."

She nodded. "Alright. Night, Sam."

"Night, Soph."

He left, and Sophie tried to find a comfortable position to attempt to fall asleep in. The whole room felt stuffy, and her head was pounding, and her throat was killing her, and while she really was trying to be optimistic, she felt terrible.

She was still attempting to find a cool spot to sleep when the door opened and Dean walked in, steaming mug in one hand and an electric fan in the other. She grinned as he sat down on her bed and wordlessly sat the mug on the bedside table and sought out an outlet to plug the fan into.

"I feel like I'm getting the princess treatment," she admitted as he leaned across her legs to plug the fan into an outlet on the opposite side of her bed.

"Yeah, well," he grunted as he stretched himself to reach the outlet, "you look like hell, and I'm used to my daughter looking pretty as a damn peach, so I'm just trying to fix that."

She couldn't help but laugh. "I'm so happy I have a dad who's so good at prioritizing."

He finally plugged the fan in and sat up, looking at her with a grin. "Anything for you, sweetheart."

She grabbed the tea and took a sip, closing her eyes and grinning. "Just the right amount of honey."

"Yeah, well, it was like half of the container," he admitted.

"Like I said. Just the right amount."

He looked at her as he flipped the fan on and set it by her bed. "You know, I really don't want to bring you to New Orleans."

She opened her eyes, but didn't respond. She just took another sip of tea, letting the hot steam soothe her throat and slowly clear her sinuses.

"Dragons are nasty," he kept going. "Seriously, if I never saw another one again for the rest of my life, it'd be too soon. And you're vulnerable, not just because you're their meal of choice, but because you're sick and…and hurting…and I'd rather just keep you away from that."

She blinked a couple times. "I don't want to die again, Dad," she told him after a moment. "But I also don't want to be the person I've been recently."

He looked at her sadly. "That doesn't mean you need to come with us."

"It means I need to move on," she said. "And staying here in the bunker and wallowing for days all alone…that's not going to help me." When Dean still looked conflicted, she said, "Besides, if you take me with you I'm just going to take naps in the backseat and read and drink tea from a thermos. And when we get to New Orleans I won't be actually hunting. I'll just be…I don't know, watching TV and maybe taking some walks or something."

Dean raised an eyebrow. "What happened to that new career track of being a hunter?"

She frowned. "I don't know," she admitted. "But I know that right now, I'm not exactly in hunting shape. So that doesn't even matter for this trip."

Dean exhaled and shook his head. "I don't know, kiddo. I'll think about it."

She nodded. "Okay." She lifted the mug in her hands a little. "Thanks for the tea and the fan."

He grinned and ruffled her hair, to her faked annoyance. "Anything for my favorite diseased delinquent." He scooted the bottle of medicine, which was sitting on the bedside table, closer to her. "I'm serious, take some more of this once you're done with the tea. You need to sleep."

She looked at him in mild amusement. "You turn into the softest mother hen sometimes," she said. "It's kind of funny because…I don't know, back when I first met you, it didn't seem like you had a soft bone in your body."

He shook his head. "What can I say, kiddo? I'm a changed man." He stood up from the bed, giving her a small grin. "But that doesn't mean I still don't kick ass as well as I ever have." He walked over to her door and turned the lights off in her room. "I'm serious, Soph. Take some more medicine and sleep."

"Aye aye, captain," she sighed.

He grinned, took one last look at her, and then slipped out of the room.

* * *

When Sophie woke up the next morning, she knew her cold had gotten worse.

Her throat was so swollen she knew she wasn't going to be able to talk very well, and she couldn't breathe even the smallest sliver of air through her nose.

She groaned pitifully as she sat up in bed, glancing at her alarm clock. It was five thirty in the morning, a good hour before Sam and Dean would wake up. Sophie knew there was no way she was going to go back to sleep, so she just grabbed a tissue, blew her nose as best as she could, and then slowly dragged herself out of bed and to her bathroom.

She stripped out of her clothing and turned the shower on as hot as it could possibly go. Then she stepped in, determined to wash off all of the germs on her body. As the steam helped her sinuses and the soap calmed her tense body, she thought about how she'd now gone two nights without nightmares. And while part of that might have been because she'd practically knocked herself out with medicine, it was still two nights longer than she had gone without them in a long, long time.

Once she'd cleaned herself off and let herself stand in the steam for as long as she could stand, she turned off the shower and got out to dry herself off. She wrapped the towel around her body, walked into her closet, and quickly pulled on an outfit consisting of her most comfortable jeans, a black tank top, and her favorite shirt to travel in, an old and faded red and navy plaid flannel. Then she threw some more clothes into a duffel bag, as well as a couple books that had been collecting dust on her shelf over the past few months of her rebellion.

When she was done, she took her bag out to the kitchen and set it on the table. Then she went ahead and started brewing a pot of coffee, grabbing out her favorite mug in preparation. As the coffee brewed, she grabbed the medicine Dean had bought her and took a few of the massive pills, swallowing them roughly and chasing them down with water. Once she stashed the medicine in her duffle bag, along with a bag of tissues and a packet of cough drops, she poured herself a cup of coffee, sat at the table, and waited.

Sure enough, about five minutes later, Sam was the first to straggle into the kitchen. He was already dressed, and by the exhausted look in his eyes, he and Dean had been up very very late the night before.

When he saw Sophie, he froze and stared at her for a few moments. His eyes fell on her packed duffle, and on her dressed and showered self, and then he exhaled. "Dean told you not to drink coffee when you're sick."

Sophie shrugged. "He also tells me not to speak to the opposite sex unless they're gay or a eunuch."

Sam just shook his head. "You sound even worse than you were yesterday."

"I am," she said. "But if I go another day with no coffee I'm going to be worse than any dragon you guys need to take down, plague or no plague."

Unable to help himself, he chuckled. "You definitely get your stubbornness from the Winchester side of things," he said.

She grinned. "It's a blessing and a curse."

"Yeah, a blessing to you and a curse to everyone else," Sam commented, making his way over to the pot and pouring his own mug.

Before Sophie could retaliate, there was a shuffle outside of the kitchen and then Dean walked in, dressed and also in search of coffee. When he saw Sam and Sophie, he groaned. "I told you not to drink coffee while you were sick," he said.

"Did you? I must've missed that," Sophie said, taking another sip of her drink.

He deflated. "Damn, you sound terrible." Then he took a closer look at her. "You're wearing your road trip flannel," he noted.

"I am," she replied with a small nod.

"That's a little presumptuous of you," he grumbled, elbowing Sam out of the way of the coffee mug to make room for him. "I didn't even tell you if you could come yet or not."

"I just decided to take some initiative," she told him matter-of-factly.

He took two large gulps of coffee, ignoring the fact that it was so hot it burnt his mouth. "You're freaking unmanageable sometimes, you know that?"

"Yep," she said. "So when are we leaving?"

* * *

Sure enough, about an hour later, the three Winchesters were on the road to New Orleans.

Sophie couldn't help but feel a rush of excitement and nostalgia. She hadn't been on a hunt with her dad and Sam for over a year, since she went around the country with them the summer before her junior year. There was a bit of a nostalgic feel to it, sitting in the backseat of the Impala with nothing but miles and miles of sunlit road ahead of them.

Granted, the feeling was tainted by the fact that Sophie was pretty sure she was suffering the flu from hell, and she was popping cough drop after cough drop into her mouth. But she still felt a sense of refreshment.

She'd been holed up in Lebanon for too long.

After a while of listening to Sam and Dean argue about the music, Sophie inserted her own earphones into her ears, started up the Taylor Swift playlist she hadn't listened to since before she died, and cracked open one of her books.

A couple hours into the drive, she felt Sam tapping her knee. She looked up, mildly surprised to see that they had pulled up to a convenience store and were parking close to the entrance. "We're stopping to get gas," he said. "Want a snack?"

She shook her head. "No thanks," she said, and then she ducked her head back into the book.

"What're you reading?" he asked her, silently glad she was reading again. To his knowledge, she hadn't so much as touched anything remotely academic since she'd returned.

"_The Importance of Being Earnest,_" she told him. "My English teacher Mr. D gave it to me on Friday and told me if I read it and wrote a paper on it, he'd give me extra credit. I wasn't going to do it, but… well, today's different than Friday."

Sam grinned at her, and out of the rearview mirror, Sophie could see a small, proud grin on Dean's lips, even if he didn't turn around and say anything to her. It made her feel warm, that she could spend weeks disappointing him and still he was able to be proud of her for the smallest thing.

"That's good, Soph," Sam said after a moment. "Mr. D sounds like a good guy."

"He is," Sophie admitted. "He's been kind of tough on me, probably because I've been acting like an asshole in his class. But for some reason he didn't give up on me. So, I guess the least I owe him is this extra assignment." Then she sighed. "Although my guess is that if I do this one, he's going to give me more until my grade's not a D anymore."

Sam whipped his head around to look back at her. "You have a _D _in English?" he exclaimed.

"I thought I told you that," Dean said, glancing over at Sam.

Sam glared at Dean. "No, you left that little piece of information out."

Dean shrugged. "Well, we were busy trying to figure out where Sophie had driven off to while she was drunk and angry, so—"

"Look, it doesn't matter," Sophie interrupted, frustrated. "I have mostly Ds right now, and a couple Cs. If I work really hard for the rest of the semester, I can maybe pull off Bs and a couple As."

At that, Dean did look back. "So you're planning on working hard?"

Sophie narrowed her eyes. "What's it to you either way?"

He lifted his hands off the wheel for a moment in surrender. "Hey, sue me for wanting to know if you're still planning on screwing yourself over to become a hunter."

"Dean, c'mon, is this necessary right now?" Sam asked him in a low voice.

Before Dean could respond, Sophie butted in. "I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I'm going to try to get good grades from here on out just in case I end up deciding school is for me. But…I'm not going to isolate the hunting option either. That's a part of me now. And I get to make that choice, not you."

There was a quiet moment, which Sophie quickly filled with her coughing. After the bout subsided, she croaked, "Look, I'm not crazy anymore. I'm going to think things through before I do them. So stop worrying about things that are way outside of our immediate concerns, get some gas and snacks, and let's get this show on the road."

Sam looked over at Dean, who still looked frustrated. "C'mon, patient zero's spoken," he said.

Dean just grunted unintelligibly and opened the door to the Impala, getting out swiftly and shutting the door loudly behind him. When Sam had gotten out and closed his door as well, Dean said in a low voice, "We can't just ignore this whole hunter thing."

Sam nodded. "Yeah. But we can for now. She's right, there are sort of some bigger fish to fry at the moment. We need to make sure she stays alive long enough for the hunter thing to even be a problem we need to deal with."

Dean exhaled. "Fine. Whatever." They started making their way into the convenience store, and as Dean reached for his wallet, he said, "You know, this mystery box better help us kill Beelzebub, or I don't know what the hell we're gonna do."

"We'll figure it out," Sam said. "But for now, we follow the lead."

Dean just glanced at him, shook his head, and disappeared down the booze aisle.

* * *

"Sophie, I'm serious, no going outside. You're staying in here until morning."

"But Dad," she whined, "I've been in the car all day, I need to stretch my legs."

He gave her a look. "Then take a couple laps around the motel room, because you are not leaving here while Sam and I are away staking out the dragons' pawn shop. You're sick and tired and a virgin, so you're staying put."

She made a disgruntled sound. "Maybe I'll just go find that guy at the front desk, he looked like he'd be willing to fix one of those things. Probably wouldn't even care if I was sick."

"That," Dean said sharply, "is not a funny joke."

"You're right, I'm sorry," she sighed, lying back on the bed she'd flounced onto as soon as she got in the room. She leaned over to grab her backpack that she'd brought with her and pulled out her laptop. "I guess I'll just write this extra credit paper for school."

"You know what else you could do?" Dean continued as he shoved some weapons into his bag, the most prominent being a broken sword that Sophie assumed was the one meant to kill dragons. "You could start that alcohol safety course you have to take to stay in school."

She groaned. "Ugh."

"You brought that one on yourself, sweetheart," he told her.

"Don't you have a gaggle of dragons to slay?" Sophie said bitingly.

Dean just threw her a bitch face and yelled out to Sam, who was in the bathroom, "Yo, Gigantor, are you ready to go yet or have you still not perfected the art of getting clothing onto your freakishly tall body?"

At that, the door to the bathroom opened, and Sam walked out, buttoning the last few buttons on his shirt. "You're the one that spilled your Coke all over me," Sam grumbled in annoyance. "I didn't even want to stop at that stupid fast food place."

"Sophie wanted to," Dean said defensively.

"I said I wanted to stop to get a water," Sophie cut in. "You're the one that chose Taco World."

"Semantics," Dean said dismissively. "C'mon, Sammy, let's hop to it, I kinda wanna get back home before Soph has to get back to school. Probably wouldn't be great form for her to miss the first few days of school post-suspension."

"I'm right here, no need to refer to me in third person," Sophie said, perching her reading glasses on her nose. Dean would never tell her, but he thought the glasses were the damned cutest thing in the world, and they reminded him that his daughter was infinitely smarter than he'd ever be, even if she _had _been neglecting her studies recently.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," Sam said, grabbing his phone and holstering a gun to his belt. He bent down and gave Sophie a quick kiss on the top of her head before heading towards the door.

Dean pointed at her as he made his way to the door as well. "Stay."

She rolled her eyes. "I will."

His eyes narrowed. "And no sex."

"No promises." His sharp glare made her exhale. "Did I say no promises? I meant no problem."

"Good girl," Dean said, purposefully sounding patronizing. "We'll be back soon, it's just a little recon."

She nodded. "I'm holding you to that."

He held her gaze for a few seconds, and then he nodded tersely. Just a moment later, both he and Sam were out the door.

* * *

Sophie would have been lying if she said she wasn't worried that Sam and Dean would actually make it back that night.

But sure enough, around three in the morning, they finally came back, tired and grumpy, yet unharmed.

Sophie was still awake. She had just finished her extra credit paper, and was fine tuning her edits before emailing it to Mr. D. She figured turning it in early, during her suspension, might be a good sign of faith on her part.

When Sam and Dean walked through the door, they immediately froze when they saw she was still awake. "Soph," Dean said in a tired voice. "You're supposed to be sleeping and getting over the plague."

Sophie glanced down. She was swimming in an ocean of used tissues and cough drop wrappers, and a Styrofoam cup that she kept refilling with tea she made from the tiny in-room coffee pot and teabags she'd brought. "I wanted to finish my paper," she said, voice obscured by her stuffy nose.

Dean just chucked under his breath and shook his head. "Well, we're back now to force you to sleep, so put the school stuff away and try to get some solid sleep."

She shrugged, closing her laptop and taking off her glasses. As she started piling up all her tissues, an admittedly unglamorous task, she asked, "How was the dragon detective work?"

"Well," Sam said, dropping his duffle bag and shrugging out of his jacket, "they're dragons alright."

"How do you know?" Sophie asked, getting up out of bed and throwing away her tissues and her Styrofoam cup. She was already in her pajamas, having taken a quick shower around midnight to wake herself up a little bit, so once she'd cleared off her bed she hopped back into it and curled up under the covers.

"The pawn shop pretty much only had gold in it," Sam said. "And when we did some more digging once the dragon working the counter checked the back for an antique watch Dean pretended to want, there was some evidence of a secret room that kinda seemed like the perfect place to store prey to eat later."

"Sounds delightful," Sophie said. "Did you see the box?"

"Nope," Dean grunted as he shrugged out of his jacket and button down. He sat down on the edge of the empty bed and pulled off his shoes, looking at Sam. "So dude, you wanna bunk with patient zero?"

Immediately Sophie uncurled herself and splayed all of her limbs across the bed. "No way, I've claimed this as my own." She turned her head and coughed into her pillow before giving a small grin. "Mine."

"You're disgusting," Dean noted.

"Learned from the best."

Sam shook his head, stripped off his button down so that he just wore his undershirt and jeans, and then sat down on Sophie's bed to take off his shoes. Then he nudged Sophie, who pretended to be annoyed and grumbled as she rolled over to one side, though secretly she was a little happy that Sam had chosen her over fighting with Dean. Then he proceeded to lean back against the pillows and throw the sheets over him.

Dean looked at him in repulsion. "Dude. You're gonna be dead tomorrow."

Sam shrugged. "If she's contagious we're already going down, Dean, we were in a car with her for fifteen hours. And I'm too tired to fight you. So since you're too much of a baby to sleep within a foot of your sick kid, I'll do it."

Sophie rolled over and curled up next to Sam in an overwrought fashion. "Thanks for loving me more, favorite uncle," she said in an annoyingly sweet voice.

He chuckled and threw an arm over her to complete the show. "Anytime, favorite niece."

Dean made a gagging sound. "Hey, if I have to prove my love by throwing myself straight into the arms of the plague, you can count me out."

Sophie laughed and disengaged herself from Sam, moving back to her side of the bed. "Enjoy your isolation over there, Dad."

"You're both gonna be goners tomorrow, and then I'm gonna have to kill all the dragons by myself."

"Stop whining and go to sleep, Dean," Sam said.

"Look, say what you want about love and cuddles and all that sparkly crap, when you wake up tomorrow with scarlet fever or whatever the hell she has, you're gonna be wishing you'd fought me for this bed," Dean grumbled as he turned off the lights and collapsed into bed.

Sophie closed her eyes and grinned as Sam and Dean continued to spar back and forth at each other, and after a moment, their voices faded into the recesses of her mind and she slipped into a light, soft sleep.

* * *

When Sam woke up the next morning, he was immediately aware of three things.

One, he felt completely fine. Sleeping next to his sick niece had done nothing to his finely tuned immune system, which he chalked up to his careful attention to his health.

Two, Dean was coughing in his sleep. Sam had to make a conscious effort to hold in his laughter. After all of his brother's bitching and moaning about wanting to stay away from Sophie, he still had managed to catch at least a little of whatever she had.

And three, Sophie wasn't in bed.

He sat up, rubbing his eyes and glancing around the room. She was nowhere to be seen. He threw the covers off of him and, after a moment of further observation, realized that the light was on in the bathroom.

He felt a little relieved, and then a little paranoid. He was always paranoid when it came to Sophie nowadays. So was Dean. They now knew what it was like for her to be gone, and they weren't about to let it happen again on their watch.

Sam got up, opting to let Dean sleep for a little longer. If he really _was _getting sick, he could probably use the extra rest before going to slay some dragons. Sam dragged himself over to his duffel bag, grabbing out a fresh set of clothes. He needed to take a shower, and then he needed coffee, and then he needed to do a bit of research….

As he made a list of things to do in his mind, he slowly became aware that Sophie had now been in the bathroom for an exorbitant amount of time. He checked the clock, frowning. He'd now been awake for a little under ten minutes, and he assumed that Sophie had woken up a decent amount of time before him, otherwise he'd have woken up to her getting out of bed.

He walked over to the bathroom door, somewhat warily. He cleared his throat. "Soph?" he asked, loud enough that she would be able to hear him through the door and soft enough that it wouldn't wake Dean up. "Soph, you alright in there?"

There was no reply.

His frown deepened, and he went to knock on the door. But when he did, the door swung open, and when he looked inside the bathroom, his eyes widened.

"Dean!"

**Sorry for my updating delays! I'm really trying to do one per week but I'm so dang busy! **

**Hopefully, _hopefully_, I see you again next week.**

**Also, friendly reminder that I have a tumblr where you can ask me any questions about the story or my writing, or send me anything else! It's the same username I have here, laceyofthetypewriter. Just for those who may be interested. **

**~ Lacey :)**

**PS - Sorry for the cliffhanger**

**PPS - Not really, I love cliffhangers.**


	92. Chapter 92: Father Of The Year

_Chapter 92: Father Of The Year_

_"Dean!"_

The scene in front of Sam had shocked him. Sophie was lying beside the toilet, pale and breathing in short, shallow gasps. It looked like she'd thrown up into the toilet, because even though most of it appeared to be flushed, she'd missed a little bit. Her eyes were closed, and Sam was fairly certain she was unconscious, or close to it.

"Dean!" he yelled again. "Get in here!"

He heard Dean roll over in his bed and cough a few times before groaning out in a hoarse voice, "What the hell? Why? Is this like the time when you were six when you thought you were dying because of the funky color of your—"

"Because we need to get Sophie to a hospital!" Sam called out, not in the mood to hear Dean's witticisms, dropping to his knees beside his niece and placing a hand on her forehead. She looked feverish, but felt clammy, and even though Sam wasn't a medical expert, he certainly knew that couldn't be a good sign. "Soph," he said in a harried voice. "Soph, c'mon, wake up."

He heard Dean jumping out of bed and running over to the bathroom, pulling his shoes on as he stumbled towards them, and when Sam looked up he saw his brother in a slightly crazed state, his hair sticking up and his shirt twisted on his body. When Dean's eyes fell on Sophie, he pushed into the bathroom and fell on the other side of her. "What happened?" he asked gruffly, placing his hands on Sophie's face.

"She must've woken up in the middle of the night, gotten sick, and then passed out," Sam said, stringing all the evidence together at one moment.

Dean lightly tapped Sophie's cheeks, but she didn't move at all. "C'mon, kiddo, up and at 'em," he tried.

When she didn't respond and just kept breathing shallowly and erratically, Sam said, "She's gotta get to a hospital."

"Dammit," Dean grumbled, but he was already putting his arms around her and pulling her towards him so that he could lift her up. "Grab my keys, they're in my jacket pocket."

Sam nodded, quickly exiting the bathroom to get the keys while Dean picked up a trembling, barely breathing Sophie into his arms. He made his way to the motel door as Sam quickly met him there with the keys, and within two minutes they were in the Impala and looking up the nearest hospital on Sam's phone.

"How's she doing?" Dean asked from the driver's seat, looking in the backseat at Sam holding up Sophie next to him.

"Still breathing, just not very well," Sam said in a troubled voice. "How was she this bad and we didn't even notice?"

"She probably just got worse overnight. I doubt she knew it herself," Dean said in a tired voice. He was tired, and worried, and frustrated, and he was wondering when anything would just go right for his family for once.

Sam was quiet for a moment. Then, "There's a hospital ten minutes north, if you push the speed limit we can get there in seven."

Dean's foot fell hard on the gas, and they shot forward.

They were so preoccupied with what they needed to do that they didn't notice a red truck speed up with them.

* * *

They made it to the hospital in five and a half minutes, and the Impala wheels screeched to a halt as Dean parked atrociously in the emergency lot. Before the car was even turned off, Sam was pulling Sophie out of the car and making his way into the emergency room, Dean not far behind him.

Luckily for them, the emergency room was shockingly empty for a city as big as New Orleans. The on-duty nurse took one look at the harried brothers carrying an unconscious girl, widened her eyes, and then picked up a phone and mumbled into it. Minutes later, after a flurry of explanations and papers signed and time wasted, Sophie was being wheeled away on a stretcher as a nurse assured Sam and Dean that someone would be out to speak with them as soon as they had any news.

And so they waited. After he filled out the appropriate paperwork with his fake insurance information, Dean couldn't sit, so he just paced up and down the waiting room. He was coughing up a lung, and he was only wearing his undershirt from the night before and jeans, and his hair was still sticking up at all angels, and his eyes were glazed with an incoming fever and worry for Sophie.

"Dean," Sam said from his seat by the front desk. "Sit down. There's nothing we can do till the nurse comes back."

Dean was going to volley back something typically biting and sarcastic, but was cut off by his need to cough. When he regained composure, he glared at his brother. "You slept next to her and you look like you just drank from the fountain of youth, what the hell is that about?" he grumbled. "Meanwhile I did everything to shield myself and I'm still the one that gets sick."

"That's probably because you haven't eaten a vegetable in ten years."

Dean shot him a look and then ran a hand down his face. "God, Sam, she looked awful."

Sam nodded. "She's sick and under a lot of stress. Her body was just overworking itself. But she's gonna be fine. She is."

Dean finally stopped pacing and sat down beside Sam. "You know, I'm a pretty crappy father, when you consider my track record," he said in an even voice, staring ahead at a particularly gauche piece of art on the wall, meant to brighten the waiting room up but only serving to make it infinitely worse. "In the time I've been looking out for her, she's been in the hospital three times, she's been arrested, she's totaled a car, she's almost been killed more times than I can count, and this one is the kicker, she's _died_."

Sam shrugged. "I mean yeah, I guess technically that's all true. But without you, she'd be dead, and dead for good. Some monster would have found her and used her against you. Better that you were there to minimize the damage, and learn that the whole "loving people" thing isn't all just pain and suffering."

Dean stared steadily at the ugly painting on the wall, unsure of how to reply.

As it turned out, he didn't need to. A moment later, a pretty, tall nurse walked out into the room and called out, "Family of Sophie Winchester?"

Immediately, Sam and Dean jolted to their feet. "That's us," Sam told her, and she walked over with a clipboard in her hand.

"Well, I'm happy to tell you that Sophie is doing just fine," she said, glancing down at the clipboard underneath black bangs. "She was just severely dehydrated and has a nasty flu. She felt sick when she got up this morning and barely made it to the bathroom before she vomited and passed out from exhaustion and lack of fluids. But she's on an IV right now and feeling better by the minute. We're going to write up a prescription for some medicine for her and keep her here for a few more hours just to make sure we didn't miss anything, but you two can rest easy for now."

Unsurprisingly, relief fell over the both of them. Dean didn't waste a second before asking, "Can we see her?"

The nurse nodded. "That's what I'm here to do, bring y'all back to the room." She beckoned for them to follow her, and they did without question.

The hospital was rather large, so they had to take a few turns and an elevator before they arrived at the hallway where Sophie's room was. The nurse took them to the third door to the left, and when Sam and Dean looked inside, they saw Sophie lying in bed, skin pale as a sheet and hair limp and listless, but grinning widely when she saw them walk in.

The nurse set the clipboard on the table beside Sophie. "Alright, hon, the family's all here. You take it easy and I'll be back in a few to check your vitals, alright?"

Sophie nodded. "Thanks, Margaret," she said in a voice so tired, it almost sounded like a whisper.

"Of course, sweetie," Margaret said, and then she gave Sam and Dean a smile and slipped out of the room.

Sam immediately walked up and took the seat next to Sophie's bed. "Hey, Soph. How're you feeling?"

She shrugged lightly. "Tired and gross," she admitted. She looked at Sam and then over at Dean, who was still staring at her and evaluating her health from afar, trying to see if she really was okay now. "Sorry for scaring you like that," she added. "I didn't realize it was that bad until it was too late."

Dean just smirked. "Classic Winchester move, not admitting things are worse than they look."

She gave a weak laugh. "Guess so," she said. Then she frowned. "What about the dragons?"

"What about them?" Sam asked lightly.

She shifted in her bed, trying to sit up, but Sam gave her a stern look and put a hand on her shoulder, and she leaned back down before grumpily replying, "Well, you need to go kill them, right?"

"We don't need to worry about that right now," Sam said. "You never make hunting plans in hospital rooms, as a general rule."

"Well, break the rule," Sophie said. "I'm fine, I just didn't drink enough water and I pushed myself too hard. I'm fine here. Margaret's nice, I told her that you two might have to go to work soon and she told me she'd play cards with me or something. But we came here for a reason."

Dean shook his head. "We can wait a little longer until you're charged up enough to leave here, kiddo."

Sophie glared at him. "No, we can't wait. We need to kill those dragons so we can get that box so we can be one step closer to killing Beelzebub and Sonny! My dumb cold shouldn't get in the way of that."

Sam gave her a look. "Dumb colds don't get you hospitalized, Sophie."

Her glare didn't waver. "I don't really want to play this card, but every day Beelzebub and Sonny continue to exist my chances of survival continue to go down. So please. Just leave me with Margaret, we'll have a great time, I'll get some electrolytes in my system, and you guys go get that stupid box."

Dean shook his head. "Soph, we just carried you into a hospital, I don't think—"

"Dad," she said sternly, cutting him off. "If I was your seventeen-year-old son instead of your seventeen-year-old daughter, would you even think twice about going off and killing those monsters? Regardless of the consequences?"

Dean rolled his eyes. "Don't try to make this into some sexism thing, Soph, I'm just trying to be a good—"

"Oh, stop, don't do that whole 'I'm such an awful human being' thing. You're a great dad. I may not be at one hundred percent, but I can handle myself for a few hours while you guys do the dirty work," she said. "Yeah, maybe you guys shouldn't be treating me like some invulnerable warrior king or anything, but you also shouldn't be treating me like a helpless little girl.

Dean looked over at Sam, who didn't say anything. Then he glanced back at Sophie. "Can you even stand up?" he asked, doubt lacing his voice.

She nodded. "I mean, I won't lie, I'm pretty tired. But if I needed to, I could get up and move around."

"But not enough to fight anybody off," Dean said sternly.

"Look, Dad, if Beelzebub or Sonny finds me here in this hospital, it's not gonna matter if I'm at one hundred percent or not, I'm a goner. That's the risk I take walking outside of the bunker, ever. That's the same risk I take when I just go to school. So I don't think we need to worry about that."

Dean just stared at her. He didn't feel good about leaving her, not at all. But then again, he never felt good about anything involving her nowadays. And to be fair, she was probably just as safe in this hospital as she was waiting in the motel for them to finish off the dragons.

And she was right. Time was of the essence.

He finally just nodded. "If you so much as dangle a _foot_ off of this bed, I want you to call and let me know you've moved, got it?"

She nodded and grinned, clearly pleased she'd won this argument. "Will do."

"I'm dead serious, Soph," Dean said sharply, trying to give her the sternest look he could muster given her rather pathetic current state. "Don't leave this room. Call us if anything happens, anything at all."

"You know I will," she said with a sigh, giving her dad a long look. "I promise, I'm not going to do anything stupid. Honestly, I just want to take a nap."

At that, Dean cracked a grin. "Alright, fine. We'll talk to the nurse when she gets back, and if everything really is okay, we'll go take care of business."

Sophie grinned back at him. "Finally, you see the light."

Dean just shook his head. "I'm always going to take a damn long time to see the light when it comes to you, Soph, that's just a fact."

She smirked and looked over at Sam. "Are you in on this, too?"

He nodded. "The dragons need to go down. And you're right, you're just as safe in this hospital as you are back at the motel. You might as well be somewhere that can help you if you somehow get worse."

"If I can get worse than where I'm at, please, just end it for me," she groaned.

At that moment, Margaret walked back in, smiling widely at Sophie. "Hey again, sweetie! Let's check that heartbeat of yours, shall we?"

As Sophie sat up so Margaret could get to work on checking her vitals, Dean cleared his throat, which turned into him coughing a few times. "So, uh, Miss—"

Margaret snorted. "Margaret. Just Margaret, please."

Dean nodded. "So, Margaret, she's all good, right?"

"She's got a nasty flu, but as long as she rests and stays hydrated and takes medicine for the next few days, she'll be just fine," Margaret said cheerily, offering Sophie a friendly wink.

Sophie looked up at Margaret. "So, if I have to be here for a while, can my dad and uncle go to work? They just have this really important meeting, and I don't want them to miss it if I'm just resting."

Margaret nodded, glancing at the clock. "You'll need to be out of here by six tonight, or your insurance won't cover the room and you'll have to pay out of pocket. But other than that, you seem to be on your way to being fit as a fiddle." She turned to Dean and Sam. "I'd say as long as you make sure not to turn your phones off and you stay on standby, you should be good to go to your meeting."

Sam and Dean exchanged a glance, and then they both looked at Sophie. "Are you sure you're feeling okay enough for us to go?" Sam asked, one last time.

"You heard the nice nurse, I'm fit as a fiddle," she replied with a grin. "You two go."

Dean leaned over and placed a quick kiss on the top of her head. "Feel better, patient zero."

She nodded. "You, too. You sound pretty awful yourself, to be honest," she said. Then she paused for a moment before adding, "Be careful."

"It's just a business meeting, what's there to worry about?" he said, shooting her a wink.

And then he and Sam were out the door.

* * *

All things considered, Sophie was having a pretty decent day at the hospital.

She had practically unlimited access to Gatorade and the TV, and spent the first hour or so watching reruns of _Seinfeld_ on the tiny little screen mounted on the wall. Margaret came in every once in a while to check on her, but Sophie was comfortable with just resting and being lazy. The only time she needed Margaret was when she started feeling lightheaded again, and after checking up on her Margaret fixed the problem by letting Sophie have a small bowl of soup, which immediately made her feel better.

She was worried about Sam and Dean. Apparently they'd dealt with dragons before, but judging by what she knew, dragons were really no laughing matter. And while she trusted in her family's uncanny ability to escape even the most perilous of dangers with their lives intact, she couldn't help but be scared. It was only natural.

Her distractions worked to assuage her fear for a little while, but ultimately she found herself staring at her phone, watching the minutes tick by, wondering if they'd make it back before six. She knew she should nap or read or do something other than stew in worry, but she was starting to think that wasn't possible.

A little after noon Margaret came in and smiled at Sophie. "Hey, sweetie, how're you feeling?"

Sophie grinned back at her, even though it felt fake to her. "Well, I don't feel as bone tired, so that's probably good."

"Definitely good," Margaret agreed. "If your dad was here, you'd be good to be discharged."

Sophie nodded. "His meeting shouldn't last much longer," she said. "Thanks for keeping me company."

Margaret beamed. "Thanks for not being half as annoying as some of my usual patients," she laughed.

Sophie grinned back at her. "Yeah, well, believe me, you caught me on a good—"

Her sentence was interrupted by a shriek in the hallway, followed by a crash. Sophie bolted upright in bed as Margaret gasped loudly. The nurse looked at the door, then back at Sophie with terrified wide eyes, and then back at the door. For a moment, the silence rang loudly between them. "What in the _hell_—"

Before she could say anything else, the door to Sophie's room burst open, crashing loudly against the wall. Margaret screamed as two men, armed with very large and very scary knives, barreled into the room.

Sophie had already tugged the IV out of her arm and slid out of bed, her adrenaline starting to kick in full throttle. She looked around her frantically, failing to find any sort of weapon that could help her.

The taller man, who had the darkest eyes she'd ever seen, sniffed the air and laughed with glee. "Virgins," he told the other one. "The both of them."

Sophie looked over at Margaret, unable to conceal her surprise despite their current peril. The nurse couldn't have been younger than twenty-five or twenty-six, and she was a pretty woman. Sophie had a hard time believing she hadn't lost it yet.

The time to worry about that, however, was not at that moment, because one of the men roughly grabbed Margaret and pulled her against him. She couldn't even shriek before his hand clamped over her mouth.

Sophie felt sick as the other man, shorter but no less terrifying, approached her. His eyes latched onto her, and he grinned maliciously. "You must be the famous Sophie Winchester," he growled, eyes glittering like she was a hoard of gold.

"You don't know who I am," Sophie told him, surprised at how easily she was able to keep her voice level when she was terrified out of her mind.

The creature, which she presumed was a dragon, chuckled. "We've had your scent ever since your idiot father and his idiot brother came into our store yesterday. We wanted to take them out then and there, but when we realized they had not only a virgin girl with them, but the thing that the Lord Beelzebub wants above all else and is willing to pay a hefty price for…well, we couldn't pass up the opportunity."

Sophie glanced at the window. She was only on the second floor of the hospital, maybe she could make a break for it and run….

But then the dragon launched himself at her, and she screamed as his blazing hands latched onto her body and threw her into a wall.

Her head smashed against the cold doorframe of her hospital room, and in just a second, she was out like a light.

* * *

Sam and Dean sat in the Impala outside of the dragon's pawn shop, illustriously christened The Hoard, arguing over their plan of action.

"I'm just saying," Sam said loudly, "we aren't going to help anyone if we go in too early and get ourselves killed!"

Dean glanced at his phone for the millionth time in an hour, checking to make sure Sophie hadn't called. "I don't like leaving Sophie in that hospital," he grunted before coughing into his shoulder.

"Dean, if we wait until one, that's when most of them take a break," Sam said in an annoyed voice. "If more are on break, we're better equipped to catch them off guard. It's a no-brainer."

Dean groaned and sat back in his seat, eyes glued to the pawn shop. "I hate dragons," he complained, fiddling with the stereo and skipping through a few songs he wasn't feeling quite in the mood for. "Ghosts and vamps and werewolves…those guys can be the biggest idiots. But dragons? Those dicks are smart as hell and it's the freaking worst."

Sam nodded. "Which is why we need to be careful. So rein in the trigger-happiness, got it?"

Dean just rolled his eyes and was about to make a comment about how utterly boring Sam could be sometimes when a familiar red truck pulled up to the side of the pawn shop, away from the eyes of passerby but just enough in their line of vision that they could see what was going on. Sam and Dean sat up. "That's one of their cars, right?" Dean asked for clarification, his voice now reaching the point of croaking from coughing so much.

Sam nodded. "It was sitting in the side lot yesterday, too."

They watched closely as two of the dragons got out of the front seat. They met in front of the driver's side door, talking to each other briefly, before opening the back door and reaching in to pull something out.

But as he dragged his object out, Dean realized it wasn't a some_thing_. It was a some_one_.

The first dragon held up the form of a young woman with dark hair, and Dean's head bolted upright when he realized who it was. "Isn't that…?" he started, not finishing his thought, hoping he was just seeing things or jumping to irrational conclusions or having his brain addled by whatever sickness he was trying and failing to fend off.

But Sam's eyes were narrowed. "That's Margaret," he said in a dread-filled voice. "Sophie's nurse."

Dean was already reaching for his phone. "_Damn _it," he barked, swiftly typing in Sophie's number and keeping his eyes on the truck as he held the phone to his ear. "Sophie, pick up the phone, for the love of God…"

And then, to his horror, he saw the second dragon reach into the backseat, and when he emerged, the unconscious form of a small redheaded girl was in his arms.

"Son of a bitch!" Dean roared, and he made to kick his door wide open and charge inside the pawn shop after the dragons who had his daughter.

Sam's hand latched onto Dean's shoulder. "What did I say about your trigger-happiness?" he practically hissed.

"Are you kidding me? They have Sophie," Dean spat. "Sorry if I'm willing to break a few eggs to keep those bastards the hell off of her."

"And you think I'm not?" Sam said. He reached into the back and grabbed a duffle bag filled with weapons, handing Dean the broken blade that would kill a dragon and arming himself with an angel blade, which could only wound and not kill dragons. "We're going to go in. Just a little more stealthily than your usual kamikaze plan."

Dean glared, clenching the blade in his fist. "This is why I didn't want to leave her there alone," he snapped, mostly angry at himself.

"If they found her at the hospital, they'd have found her at the motel," Sam said, arming his pockets with anything in the duffle he thought might be useful.

"Then we shouldn't have even brought her with us," Dean continued, mirroring Sam and grabbing any spare weapons.

"Then she would've passed out alone at the bunker with no one to help her get to the hospital," Sam shot back, returning the duffle to the backseat once he'd finished raiding it. "Either way, it's a crap situation, and there's no point blaming anyone right now. Let's just get her and Margaret the hell out of there, along with the mystery box."

"Sounds easy enough," Dean snorted, opening the Impala door.

But before he could get any farther, he heard a fluttering of wings. And to his surprise, when he turned around, he saw the harried form of Remy standing behind him.

Dean hadn't expected Remy's appearance at all. He hadn't seen the angel in a while, not since the last time he called and asked for an update on Sophie at school, which had not been very positive. "Remy," he said as Sam also exited the car. "I don't know if I'm glad or annoyed to see you."

"Be glad," he said, glaring at Dean. "I see Sophie's been kidnapped by dragons. Way to go, Father of the Year."

"Look, you don't need to tell me twice how crappy of a parent I am, I get enough of that from my own damn self," he grunted, coughing a little into his shoulder.

"And apparently, she was also in the hospital? What the hell? Why are the same stories happening all over again?" Remy continued, relentless.

"Where the hell are you hearing all this from? I thought you weren't connected to her anymore?" Dean asked, frustrated and determined to shift the focus of the conversation.

"I've been tuning in to her wavelength every once in a while as best as I can," he said brusquely. "It's hard to explain to a human, but since I've been connected to her soul I can still sort of identify it in a world that is just a sea of human souls, and sometimes if I concentrate hard enough I can tell where she is or if anything huge is happening to her. It's only a small fraction as potent as the connection we used to have, but—"

"No offense, Remy, but right now I'm less concerned with the physics of angel mojo and more concerned with the fact that my daughter's been taken hostage by freaking _dragons_," Dean snapped. "Now are you going to keep making small talk or are you going to help us save her ass?"

"_Por que no los dos?_" he chirped in response.

"Remy, I swear to God..."

Remy grinned, and suddenly a large sword materialized in his hands. "This should help us out."

Both Sam and Dean stared blankly at the sword. Then Sam said, "Is that…?"

"A sword forged in dragon's blood? A blade that can kill a dragon? You betcha. I figured we might need a bit more firepower than that broken twig of a sword in your hands."

Dean looked at him in shock. "Where the hell did you get that? It took us a whole lot of time and a stick of dynamite to get ours."

Remy's green-grey eyes brightened in amusement. "I thought you didn't like small talk?"

Dean didn't need to be told twice. He, Sam, and Remy quickly discussed how and when they would each enter the pawn shop, and once the plan was set, Dean looked at all of them. "We get Sophie, and _then _we find the box. I don't care how important it is to killing Beelzebub, we get her first."

Everyone just stared in silent agreement. Then Dean nodded. "Alright then," he said. "Guess I'm going in first."

According to plan, Dean turned, coughed a couple more times into his shoulder, and made his way towards the pawn shop, making sure to stay out of sight of windows or doors, wanting to remain unseen for as long as possible.

His blood burned at the thought of his daughter being taken away from him _again_. He wasn't going to let it happen. If it did, he was going to tear the world apart to get his revenge. He'd do anything, give anything, kill anything—

He stopped himself. He couldn't be thinking this way, not when Sophie was still very much alive. He had to keep his eye on the prize—getting Sophie out of there, killing those damn dragons, and finding the box. But primarily, getting Sophie out of there.

So, weapon at the ready, he feverishly and determinedly made his way forward.

**Guyyyyyyys I'm so sorry that two weeks in between updates is starting to become a regular thing. I'm really trying here. School is hard. I have no other excuse.**

**Fingers crossed I'm able to update next Saturday. My week isn't too too hectic, so I'm really hoping I'll have the time.**

**Thanks for hanging in there guys! Even though this chapter was short. As always, there is so much more to come.**

** ~ Lacey :)**


	93. Chapter 93: Apples and Trees

_Chapter 93: Apples and Trees_

Sophie felt the pain in her head before she realized she was conscious.

She groaned, wanting to blink but momentarily stunned by the radiating pain in her head. After a moment of adjusting to the shooting pain, she finally managed to open her eyes and squint through the dim light of the room she was in, which, upon brief observation, she realized was about as small as an storage space under the stairs.

After a moment of slowly regaining her consciousness, she realized there was a soft voice saying her name and a hand gently shaking her shoulder. "Sophie," it said quietly. "Sophie, sweetie, can you hear me? It's Margaret. From the hospital."

Sophie groaned in response, blinking a few more times as she started to make out Margaret's face hovering over hers. "Where're we?" she mumbled, slowly propping herself up onto her elbows.

Margaret stared at Sophie with terrified blue eyes. "I don't know," she whispered. "Those…_things_…they brought us to some…I don't know, a warehouse, a store, I don't know…."

"A pawn shop?" Sophie asked, a feeling of dread growing in her stomach.

Margaret nodded slowly. "I…yeah, yeah, that sounds about right."

Sophie sat the rest of the way up, lifting a hand to a throbbing bump on her head that was coated in dry blood. "What ever happened to good ole chloroform?" she grumbled. "Why does everyone have to go around bashing people's heads in to knock them out nowadays? What happened to kidnapping etiquette?"

Margaret eyed her warily. "How are you feeling, Sophie?" she asked tentatively. "Weak? Nauseous? Dizzy?"

Sophie just gave her a look. "I feel like I have the flu plus I just got flung into a wall," she said matter-of-factly.

Margaret seemed concerned. "You were well enough to be discharged from the hospital, but you're still sick and you're still weak, and that head wound isn't going to help anything."

Sophie exhaled, scanning the room for some sort of escape route and finding nothing but a padlocked door. "Margaret, I really think me being sick and having a headache is the least of our worries right now."

Margaret just stared at Sophie for a few seconds as intently as she could. "Why do I get the feeling this situation doesn't exactly shock you?"

Sophie exhaled again. Explaining these kinds of things to people who knew nothing about all of the craziness and chaos in the world was always difficult. "Because it doesn't," she said. "Margaret, this is going to sound crazy, but the people who took us…they're dragons."

Margaret's face went blank. Then she choked out a nervous laugh. "I think that head wound is a little worse than it looks, sweetie—"

"They're dragons," Sophie said sternly, staring straight at Margaret, her face containing no trace of deception. "They're crazy smart, crazy deadly, almost impossible to kill, and their favorite food is fresh virgin."

Margaret's eyes widened. "What?" she asked faintly.

"I'm assuming that…that since you're here…you're a…uh, you know…," Sophie trailed.

Margaret blushed. "Um, yeah, I've never had sex, if that's what you're asking."

Sophie nodded, reddening too. "Yeah, that's, um, yeah…."

"I'm waiting until marriage. Sue me," Margaret said quickly. "But I don't think that's the most important thing right now. You're saying these…these…_dragons_…they can tell that we haven't slept with anyone just by…sensing it?"

Sophie shrugged. "Yeah, I mean, I don't really know the physics or the magic of how it works, just that they know and now we're in a hell of a lot of trouble. But don't freak out just yet, my dad and my uncle probably already know I'm gone and trust me, they're probably in the middle of planning their rescue mission as we speak."

Margaret looked positively faint, like one more revelation would knock her out on the spot. "I take it they weren't going for a business meeting," she squeaked out. When Sophie just gave her an affirming look, Margaret stared at Sophie partially in terror and partially in fascination. "Who _are _you people?"

Immediately, Sophie felt terrible for Margaret. The poor woman was only here because Sophie was who she was. She didn't deserve any of this. She was just collateral damage in a fight Sophie was getting more and more tired of fighting.

"We're hunters," Sophie told her gently. "Or, at least, my dad and uncle are. I'm kind of a prospective hunter. Shadowing the job, figuring out if it's the best fit. Don't tell my dad that, though, or he'd probably shoot me."

"Hunters," Margaret repeated.

"Yeah."

"And you hunt…dragons."

"We sort of hunt everything," Sophie admitted.

"Everything?"

"Pretty much everything is real," Sophie explained, hoping this wasn't pushing her too far too soon. "Monsters and demons and vampires and werewolves and—"

"Dragons," Margaret breathed. "And dragons."

Sophie nodded sympathetically. "To be fair, they were thought to be extinct for centuries, until just a few years ago."

"That's comforting."

Sophie offered her an apologetic glance. "I'm so, so sorry, Margaret. You shouldn't be in this mess."

Margaret snorted. "You say that is if you _should _be in this mess."

Sophie sighed, not arguing with her. "Let's just agree this sucks for both of us and find a way to stay alive until my dad and Sam find us."

"How do you know that they'll—"

Her voice faded to silence as the sound of boots thumping on the floor and low voices filled their ears. For the first time, Sophie got a good look at where they were. It was a very small, dimly lit room. The only light came from the crack beneath the door and a flickering, dusty light bulb strung from the ceiling. This must have been the room that Dean had mentioned, the room that looked primed to keep victims until it was time for dinner.

Shadows interrupted the light seeping into the room from underneath the door, and the voices were now distinguishable. "So did you call him?"

"No," another voice, deeper, replied. "We need to know it's her before we call, or he'll blast us to smithereens."

"Well how the hell do we make sure it's her?"

"Easy. If she's Dean Winchester's daughter, that stupid son of a bitch will be here any minute. And we'll be waiting."

Fear gripped Sophie's heart. The thought of her dad walking into some trap, even though she was sure that was something he anticipated, scared the crap out of her.

She felt a hand rest on her shoulder, and she turned to see Margaret offering her the bravest look she likely could muster, giving her shoulder a quick squeeze. "It'll be okay," she said, breathless with fear but clearly trying to remain composed. "It'll be okay."

Sophie just nodded, and Margaret's hand slipped off her shoulder as the door to the small room opened, and Sophie looked up as the two large men who had kidnapped them stood in the doorway, looking down on them.

"Miss Winchester," the dragon said with a slick grin on his face. "You smell just as lovely as I imagined."

Sophie didn't say anything. She was terrified, sure, but she knew she couldn't admit that she was who she was. The only thing keeping her here was the fact that they weren't one hundred percent sure that she was in fact the girl that Beelzebub wanted.

He just kept grinning at her. "How come you don't want to talk to me, darlin'?" he asked her, stepping into the room and squatting down in front of her. She noticed that up close, his eyes were a dark yellow, terrifying and sharp and staring straight at her.

Sophie just shook her head, looking away from him. She gasped when he roughly grabbed her chin and forced her to look back at him. With his other hand, he brushed some of her hair away from the wound on her head. "That looks like it probably hurts," he said, his eyes not even looking at the injury, just staring incessantly into her eyes. "Sorry about that."

She looked at him in disgust. "No you're not," she told him. It took every ounce of willpower for her to keep her voice from wavering.

He shrugged. "You're right," he admitted. He turned and looked at Margaret, who was cowering in the corner, and then looked back at Sophie with a grin. "What do you think, darlin', think Nurse Jackie over there will be tasty?"

"I think you're disgusting," Sophie told him in a low voice, not wanting him to focus on Margaret. At least Sophie had a chance at defending herself if he attacked. Margaret wouldn't stand a chance.

The dragon closed his eyes and breathed in. "You smell like you'd be one of the best meals I'd have in a while. It's a shame I can't have a taste." Then he opened his eyes, and they flashed brightly. "But don't test my patience, or I might forget my orders."

Sophie just glared at him, but remained silent.

He let his hand linger on her face, and she wanted to slap it away but she just tried to remain as calm as possible. Then, after a moment, it dropped.

But he was still staring at her. The silence in the room was as louder than any scream Sophie had ever made or heard. Then, "Take off your shirt."

Sophie's eyes widened, but she didn't move or say anything.

The dragon looked annoyed. "Are you deaf or something? Take off. Your shirt."

She stared into his eyes, hoping her terror didn't show on her face. She quickly glanced down at her shirt, which was the T-shirt she'd slept in the night before. "No."

The dragon looked irked. "I won't ask again," he said.

"Leave her alone!" Margaret squeaked out from the corner.

The dragon whipped his head around to look at Margaret. "Quiet, bitch," he snapped. "Can't you see I'm busy?" He turned his attention back to Sophie. "If you think I'm interested in doing anything to your delightfully virginal body other than eat it, you're an idiot. I'm not even interested in females in general, much less inexperienced female humans. Now take off your shirt."

Sophie stared at him. "Why?" she asked, wanting to punch herself for the tremor in her voice.

The dragon's eyes flared with anger. "I told you I wouldn't ask again!" he snarled, and he yanked Sophie forward by the collar of her shirt. She cried out in terror and Margaret screamed in fear as the dragon roughly turned her so that she faced away from him, and then raked his fingers, which had turned into claws, down the back of her shirt. The cotton fabric tore neatly in strips, leaving the shirt hanging onto her shoulders in tatters. His claws didn't tear into his skin or even into her bra, but Sophie was shaking in terror, completely uncertain as to what was happening.

But then she felt his palm on her shoulder blade, which was where her anti-possession tattoo rested on her skin. And then she realized what was happening. "So it _is _you," he breathed, and she could feel hot, pre-fiery breath on her neck. "Lord Beelzebub told us where we'd find this lovely identifier."

"Let go of me, you son of a bitch!" Sophie snapped, all attempts to remain quiet thrown out the window.

The dragon laughed. "Not before I leave you with the message that Lord Beelzebub wanted me to leave you with before summoning him." Before Sophie could react, she felt an sharp burning sensation on the exposed section of her back, and she cried out in shock and pain as she realized the dragon was burning the tattoo away with his hand.

Margaret was screaming at the dragon, and Sophie was screaming at the pain, and the dragon was laughing, and then as quickly as the pain started it stopped. The dragon released Sophie, who fell forward onto her hands and knees in front of him as her back smarted and stung.

"See, that wasn't so hard," the dragon practically sang. Sophie crawled away from him and turned to sit, her burnt back turned away from him and her eyes looking on him in pure hate as she cured up into a defensive ball.

The dragon laughed at her vulnerability and then turned his attention to Margaret. "And now for you."

Sophie watched in horror as the dragon leapt like a rapid animal towards Margaret, who screamed as the dragon grabbed her up into his arms and started dragging her towards the door. "No!" Sophie yelled at the dragon. "No, she's not a part of this! Let her go!" Margaret kept screaming and thrashing futilely in terror, and Sophie was screaming at him and begging him not to take Margaret, and he just looked at Sophie and laughed maniacally.

As he dragged Margaret towards the door, Sophie was utterly shocked when the nurse's screams ceased, and instead she started sobbing out words. It took a while for Sophie to understand, but when she did, she felt a helpless dread in her stomach.

"_… _amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace—"

And then the door slammed shut, and Margaret's sobbing litany of prayer faded from Sophie's ears. Still, the prayer echoed hauntingly in Sophie's head, over and over again, and with each echo she could hear the fear and the desperation in Margaret's voice magnify.

Sophie admired Margaret's faith. She hoped it brought the nurse some kind of comfort, she truly did. But prayer wasn't going to save her now.

Thinking about Margaret's terrified face and the kindness that the woman had shown her, Sophie did her best to ignore the slowly ebbing pain in her shoulder and drew her knees tighter to her chest, ducking her head down and closing her eyes. Her head hurt, her back hurt, and Margaret's screams echoed in her ears.

Sophie wondered what the hell that dragon was doing to her, and then realized that she really, really didn't want to know.

After a while, she heard shuffling outside of the door again, and determined to pretend she was asleep in the hopes that they might leave her alone for at least a little longer, she kept her head down between her knees. The door slid open and she heard boots clunk on the floor.

"Sophie?"

The voice shocked her, and when she looked up and saw her dad, she felt the most intense relief flood through her veins, so strong she almost started crying. He looked at her in surprise and concern, and she had to double check that it was him, which she did by blinking a few times and shaking her head, just to make sure she wasn't hallucinating. "Oh my god, Dad," she said, and he quickly stepped forward and closed the door most of the way shut, leaving it a crack open so that they could get back out.

"Hey, kiddo," Dean said, squatting down and inspecting her closely, eyes trailing angrily on the bloodied bump on her head. His observations on her wellbeing were cut off when she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him, hugging him tightly in pure relief.

"I really hate being the damsel in distress but I really really like that I can depend on you to save me whenever it happens," she said quickly into his shoulder.

Dean chuckled shortly as he gently took her shoulders and pushed her off of him. "That's my job, sweetheart." Then his eyes locked in on her wounded head. "You alright?"

She snorted. "Peachy." Then her sardonic grin faded. "Dad, one of the dragons burnt off my anti-possession tattoo."

Dean looked enraged. "He did _what_?"

She turned around and heard his low whistle when he saw the tears in her shirt and the blistering burn on her back. "Damn it, Soph," he finally said in a low voice. "This is exactly what I was afraid of, bringing you with us."

She turned around. "I'm sure it looks worse than it feels, it's honestly not that bad, just kind of like a really crappy sunburn," she told him, slowly standing up and taking a deep breath. "I'm just worried about the tattoo not being there."

Dean considered what she said as he gave the wound on her head a closer inspection, turning her head in his hands and staring at it with narrow eyes. "We're dealing with dragons now, kiddo, so we can deal with demons once we get you the hell out of here."

Sophie stepped away from Dean and shook her head. "No, Dad, you don't get it. They know who I am, they know Beelzebub wants me, and they know he's willing to pay a hefty price. For all we know, he could be on his way now. If he's not, we have to make sure we stop the dragons before they fire up the Dark Mark or however the hell you get in touch with the evilest demon on the face of the planet."

Dean's face fell. "So basically we've entered the literal worst possible scenario that could have possibly happened. And you just capped it off with a Harry Potter reference."

"First of all, I'm proud you even caught that, it means we're making progress on your pop culture education. Secondly, the worst case scenario is we all die horrible, fiery deaths, so no, we haven't entered that yet," Sophie pointed out.

Dean shot her an annoyed look. "Way to set the bar low, Soph," he grumbled. He glanced at the door, and then back at her. "Can you run?"

She briefly evaluated her own wellbeing. The bump on her head and the burn on her back didn't do much to deter her speed, but she was still pretty sick, and breathing wasn't exactly the easiest thing in the world for her at the present moment. "I can briskly walk, maybe jog," she negotiated.

Dean nodded, and she watched him take out what appeared to be a broken sword. "There's a back way I can sneak you out," he said hurriedly, using his free hand to rummage in his pockets and pull out his keys before handing them to Sophie. "The car's across the street. Once you're out, get in and drive to the motel, and Sam, Remy, and I will meet you there after we've taken care of this."

"Remy's here?" Sophie asked, surprised.

Dean gave her an exasperated look. "Did you get anything else out of that spiel besides the fact that your ex-guardian angel boyfriend bodyguard showed up to help save your ass?"

"Oh my god, he was _never _my—"

"Repeat the plan to me," Dean said sharply. Sophie did, and he nodded. "No funny business," he demanded, locking eyes with her sternly. "Escape, drive, wait. Got it?"

"Got it."

Dean peaked out of the door, and looked back at Sophie. "It's now or never," he said. "C'mon."

Sophie paused, looking over to where Margaret had been held before. "Wait, Dad…what about Margaret?"

Dean looked at Sophie for a long moment, eyes darkening. "I snuck by them on the way to bust you out," he said in a low voice. "It was… too late. I'm sorry."

Sophie's mouth dropped open for a moment in sickened horror, but then she promptly closed it. She couldn't let her emotions take her over right now. Not then. So she just nodded. "Make her be their last victim," she said in as even a voice as she could manage.

Dean nodded tersely. "We've gotta go now, Soph."

Quietly and together, they slipped out of the room she had been held in and into the tiny hallway that led to it. Dean took the lead, sword brandished, and glanced behind him. "Follow me and be quiet," he mouthed to her, and she nodded in understanding.

They crept through the ramshackle building, Dean constantly checking behind him to make sure Sophie was close enough for him to touch. He kept the sword out in front at all times, ready to strike if need be. They turned a corner, and Sophie spotted a small, rickety looking door that she presumed was the door she was meant to escape out of. Dean grabbed her hand and pulled her towards him. "You need to be as fast as you can, kiddo, okay?" he told her, putting a hand on the doorknob and preparing to open the door.

Sophie nodded. "Escape, drive, wait. Got it."

He stared at her. "You be careful, Soph."

She shook her head. "_You _be careful."

He just scoffed. "Escape, drive, wait," he repeated, and then he turned the knob and opened the door.

Light flooded into the building, and Sophie blinked once before stepping out into the sun, thinking about where the Impala might be and whether or not she remembered how to get back to the motel.

And then a dark form stepped in front of the sun, a black eclipse radiating eerie light from behind like a backlit shadow, and when it reached out and grabbed Sophie, she screamed.

She heard Dean roaring something unintelligible as the dragon shoved her back into the pawn shop, slamming the door shut behind him, cutting off the bright light and wrapping his hot hands around her throat and waist. Sophie gasped for air as her supply of it was suddenly severely restrained, and she saw Dean, sword brandished and eyes narrowed, looking on in concealed and coolheaded terror.

"You thought we wouldn't make sure the most powerful bargaining chip in the world stayed within our grasp?" the dragon hissed. This was a different one than the one who burnt off her anti-possession tattoo, shorter and stockier, but no less horrifying.

"I thought you'd be too stupid to guard the side door," Dean said through gritted teeth. "Turns out you at least have the mental capacity of an eleven-year-old who's played one too many violent video games, so that's my mistake."

The dragon's gripped tightened on Sophie's throat, and she choked out, "Dad, please stop making the scary dragon angry while he's in the middle of squeezing the life out of me."

The dragon laughed heartily, a grating, guttural sound that made Sophie cringe. "I've heard about the testy little humor of this small Winchester. What's that phrase? The head doesn't fall too far from the corpse?"

"Apples and trees, douchebag," Dean spat, trying to determine the best way to kill this dragon without harming Sophie. "Now we're back to the violent eleven-year-old thing."

The arm latched around Sophie's waist lifted itself from her body, and then she felt a single finger on her neck. She wasn't sure what was happening, but then she felt a small burning sensation, and she cried out as the finger burnt a small, red circle into her skin. It was no more painful then accidentally grabbing a too hug mug of coffee, but the helplessness of it all infuriated Sophie. "You big ugly bully," she coughed out, reaching her hands up and clawing at the hand around her neck to no avail.

She looked at Dean helplessly, whose eyes were dark with hate for the dragon but whose face was unreadable. "We're going to need to work on your insults, sweetheart," he told her in a flat voice, but she could tell he was planning how best to strike.

She tried not to think about the last time she was in a situation like this. Held by a monster that had the upper hand, right in front of her father, who had virtually no power in the situation. The last time, she'd ended up dead on the floor with a hole in her abdomen as her soul was dragged down into the pit.

But she couldn't think about that. That was then, this was now.

She closed her eyes and tried to recall every little piece of self defense that Sam and Dean had taught her. Not the knee jerk, fight or flight reaction that she usually did, but the actual, methodical, practical ways to fend off an attacker.

She opened her eyes, and the rest was muscle memory.

She took a quick, large step to her left, the suddenness of her movement causing the dragon's arm to loosen around her waist. She lifted her left arm, now unpinned from his body, and used it to cross over the arm that had a hand wrapped around her throat. Pushing that arm down with all of her might and using the leverage to rip her body free of the arm around her waist, but not her throat, she turned and had just enough free space to send a closed fist directly into the dragon's nose.

Surprised by the speed and quickness of Sophie's attempt to escape, the dragon used his free hand to cover his nose and bend forward, the fingers of Sophie's throat finally loosening. She used the leeway to turn around and face him completely, bringing her knee up into his face and using both of her hands to slam his head the rest of the way down into her kneecap.

The dragon roared in pain, and Sophie immediately turned to Dean, who looked stunned by a strange combination of pride and disbelief. "Let's go, Dad," she said quickly, and he was immediately jolted from his frozen state and grabbed her arm, pulling her away from the dragon and into his protective sphere.

As they bolted away from the dragon, who was already starting to recuperate, Dean looked over at Sophie and offered her a smirk. "Atta girl," he told her. "I still say you need to work on the insults though."

Before she could reply, they rounded a corner and realized they had hit a dead end. Dean cursed under his breath, and shoved Sophie behind him unceremoniously as he turned around and saw that the dragon had caught up.

Blood dripped from the monster's nose, and while he'd looked menacing before, now he looked menacing _and _angry. "You little bitch," he snarled. "I wish I could tear you apart with my bare hands."

"That wouldn't make Lord Beelzebub all that happy, would it?" she found herself saying to him. Dean shot her a warning look. _Don't poke the bear_, his eyes said.

But she'd already poked it. The dragon stared at her in hate. "It will be enough for me to stand by and watch as he ravages ever iota of your being. Maybe once you're long dead he'll let me feast on your lifeless body. I don't even care if you're not a virgin when he's done with you, I'll still savor every last—"

When his words were abruptly cut off by a heinous, gargling gasp, Sophie thought that her dad must've done something to him. After all, the look on Dean's face suggested that he wanted to. But no, he was still there, standing between her and the dragon, his body tense with rage and hunter's finesse. She looked back at the dragon, and when he collapsed on the floor, dead, he revealed his murderer, who was staring at the monster's corpse in disgust, a shining, bloody blade in his hands.

"Oh my god, Remy," Sophie breathed.

When her eyes met his, she felt like she'd been hit in the gut. It took her only a moment to identify what she was feeling – _guilt_.

Intense, pounding, consuming guilt. She'd been so terrible to him, after everything he'd done and sacrificed for her. After his best friend, the angel who might as well have been his little sister, suffered the highest of tortures because of her. Even after she'd brushed him off, he'd just kept trying to help her, and she'd been the worst to him.

But here he was again, being there for her. For her family. What the hell had she done to deserve that?

His eyes were warm and questioning. "Are you okay?" he finally asked her.

She couldn't help it. She pushed past her dad, who surprisingly let her, and walked over to her guardian angel, and before he could even ask her what she was doing, she wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly.

After what she assumed was a moment of surprise, she heard him chuckle lightly and wrap his arms around her back, making sure the sword in his hand didn't come anywhere near her. "If this is your way of saying thank you, then I might need to start putting you in danger just so I can save you more often."

"It's thank you," she said into his shoulder, just loud enough for him to hear, "and it's I'm sorry. And also that's very sexist." _And also kind of sexy, but I would never ever admit that to you, _she thought quietly.

She felt Remy take a deep breath. "Oh, Ace," he said after a moment, his voice filled with amusement and relief, like maybe they were finally on their way back to normal, whatever their normal was. But he didn't say anything else.

Behind them, Dean cleared his throat. "I like a good reunion just as much as the next guy, but we've got dragons to kill and a mythical box to find, so if you could kindly detach yourselves from each other that'd be great."

Remy laughed again, low in his throat so only Sophie could hear, and they let go of each other at the same time. Sophie wanted to say something else, but nothing quite seemed right, so she just turned around and looked at her dad, who was eyeing Remy suspiciously. "What now?" she asked.

"We get you the hell out of here," Dean said, and just as he said it they heard yelling down the hall, sounding scarily like Sam and a fire-breathing monster. "We've got it from here."

Sophie looked at him skeptically. "Dad, even if I agreed to that, the whole escaping thing hasn't exactly worked out all that great."

Remy stepped up. "But I'm here now," he said, and he quickly strode over to Sophie and put a hand on her shoulder. "I'll be right back," he told Dean.

Before anyone else could say anything, there was a rushing sound and Sophie blinked, and when she opened her eyes, she was back in the motel.

She stood, staring at the wall behind the beds, and then whirled around to see Remy standing beside her. "What the hell?" she exclaimed. "We have to go back!"

Remy shook his head. "_I _have to go back. _You _have to stay here, drink some liquids, and relax."

Even though Sophie had just hugged him a few moments before, she was now angry enough to hit him, but she restrained herself. "You really think I can just sit and watch _Full House _reruns while I know you're all in mortal peril? Those bastards kidnapped me and killed Margaret! This is my fight too!"

"Oh for the love of God, I'm not freaking doing this with you," Remy said, rolling his eyes. "The whole 'I deserve to fight in this fight' excuse is cliché and completely bogus. You're benched, Ace. Get comfortable with that."

She groaned, suddenly feeling her headache more potently than she had since waking up in that little closet dungeon with Margaret. She crossed her arms and looked up at Remy sharply. "Fine. But only because arguing is keeping you from going back and helping my family," she snapped. "You all better get out of there safely, with that damn box."

He smirked. "What else am I here for?"

_To save me_, Sophie almost said, but she didn't. She was a forthright person, but not like that, not with Remy. She'd never had to be so honest with him before, because when they were connected, he already knew it all. To say it now was too strange.

He must've known there was something she wanted to say, because he stepped forward, and without warning, placed his hand gently on her face, his thumb brushing the growing knot on her head. "Here," he said softly, and Sophie felt a warmth flow through her. When it faded away, the ache in her head and the residual stinging sensations left by the burns on her back and neck were completely gone.

"I thought you couldn't heal me that quickly," she said, thinking back to the car crash that now felt so long ago, putting her fingers to her head and realizing that Remy's hand was still there.

"When we were connected, most of my grace was used up," he explained, not breaking eye contact with her. "Now that we're not, I have that grace back. I'm pretty much at full power now. I'm still no Castiel, but…."

"Thank God for that," Sophie said with a little laugh. "More than one Cas would be a handful."

Remy grinned, then stepped away from her. "I have to go back. Middle of a battle and whatnot."

"I'm serious, Remy," she told him sternly. "Be careful."

"Careful's no fun," he said, giving her a mischievous grin that made her heart beat irregularly for a moment. And then he was gone.

And she was alone.

**Thanks for the patience in between chapters, guys! You're wonderful. These chapters are so fun to write, and it sucks I'm short on time.**

**More to come as soon as humanly possible (probably 2 weeks, hopefully 1, we'll just have to see).**

**~ Lacey :)**

**PS - I wrote and edited this chapter on an iPad on a train, so if it's not that well-edited or lacking my usual attention to detail/attempt to not create a giant cliche, that's why, and I apologize. **


	94. Chapter 94: The Box And The Bullet

_Chapter 94: The Box And The Bullet_

Once Remy had disappeared with Sophie, Dean immediately tried to push his concern for his daughter out of his mind and focus on his brother, who likely was in the middle of fighting off another fire-breathing bastard. He could hear the sounds of a struggle down the hall, and so without so much as a second glance at the dead dragon on the ground, he bolted toward what he hoped was still a fight.

He turned into a room that seemed to be stocked with a bunch of random pieces of antique furniture and saw Sam and two dragons locked in a fight. Sam's arm was bleeding and though he was holding his own, he looked like he was about to get overwhelmed.

So Dean did what he always did. He did whatever it took to save his younger brother.

"Hey douchebags!"

Both of the dragons paused their fighting for just a moment, and it was more than enough. Dean launched himself at the nearest one, who was caught off guard entirely, and plunged his blade through its chest. The other dragon roared and threw itself at Dean, causing him to stumble backwards and land painfully on his back, but Sam ran forward and grabbed the sword from Dean's outstretched hand and used it to swiftly dispatch the fire-breathing monstrosity.

Sam helped Dean off the ground. "You good?"

Dean dusted himself off before making sure both the dragons were in fact dead. "Yeah, you?"

"Nothing a Band-aid won't fix," Sam told him, breathing deeply and looking at Dean with a concerned look in his eyes. "Sophie?"

"She's fine. Remy zapped her back to the motel, he should be back soon."

"And Margaret?"

Dean thought about the devastated look on Sophie's face when he told her what had happened to the nurse. "Too late," he said darkly. Sam looked disappointed, but just nodded.

"How many are left?" Sam asked.

"Well, we counted eight yesterday. And three are dead. I'm no mathematician, but I'm pretty sure that leaves five dragons to gank."

"Three," a voice said behind them, and Sam and Dean turned around to see Remy standing, breathing a little heavily, a blood-stained blade in his hand. He walked up to Sam, lazily placing a finger on his forehead and instantly healing his arm. "I took care of two."

Sam inspected his arm. "Uh, thanks."

Remy nodded. "Let's keep the injuries to a minimum from here on out, if I bring you back to Sophie in less than perfect condition she'll either kill me or make me read _Brothers Karamazov_, and I don't know which of those options is worse."

Dean snorted. "If me getting injured keeps her from looking at you like you're on the cover of freaking _Seventeen_, I'll break my own arm."

Remy shrugged. "Hey, you said it, not me."

Dean's smirk fell.

"This back and forth is really cute, guys, but what the hell?" Sam snapped. "Let's just finish this, okay?"

Dean glanced at the door. "Yeah, well, I still haven't seen any damn magic box. I'm starting to think Crowley sent us on a freaking suicide mission."

"No," Remy said, shaking his head. "Something's in here. I don't know what it is…but there's something here."

"Yeah," Dean said matter-of-factly, "a gaggle of dragons."

"Look," Remy said, his eyes glinting sharply, "I can take care of the dragons. You two tear this place apart for this box thing. But if my intuition is right, it's somewhere in plain sight. Probably in the first room you're in when you walk through the front door."

"Your intuition?" Dean repeated skeptically.

"Intuition? Angel mojo? General creepy old magic vibes that are oozing from every damn corner of this place? Call it what you want, there's something important here."

Dean stared at the young angel, trying to see past the fact that he just looked like a hot college kid that wanted to bang his daughter. Finally, he nodded. "You sure you got the dragons?"

Remy waved his sword in the air. "I think I can manage," he said with a grin. "Now you two find that box, and do me a favor and _hurry_."

Without another word, Remy disappeared, and Sam and Dean were left to sleuth around.

"Split up?" Sam suggested as they made their way cautiously out of the back room.

Dean shook his head. "I'm the only one with the magic dragon-killing sword, so you're sticking with me."

They both looked up as they heard a shriek come from a few rooms down, the sound that seemed to accompany most monsters when they were faced with a ruthless Remy. "And then there were two," Sam said under his breath.

"C'mon, we can't count on Remy to kill them all so quickly, let's just find this thing so we can get back to Soph and get the hell out of this damn place," Dean said.

Sam nodded. "Remy knows we're headed to the front, so I guess we just need to trust that he at least lured them away from there."

Without any form of acknowledgement, Dean started towards the front of the pawn shop.

When they made it to the front, it was eerily quiet. Judging by the blood and ash residue behind the front counter, this had been the site of one of Remy's kills before he'd come to help the both of them out. "Okay," Sam said under his breath. "If you were a box housing an old, magical object of some sort, where would you hide?"

Dean scanned the room. "Do you think Remy was right?" he asked after a moment. "Do you think it's in plain sight?"

Sam let out a long breath. "I don't know. Maybe?"

"That's helpful."

"Like I'm supposed to know where this freaking box is any more than you do?" Sam snapped back. "You know what, no, we're not arguing about this. Split up and search the room."

Dean just nodded, and without preamble the Winchester brothers took opposite sides on the room and began to tear the place apart.

It looked like a sitcom, the two of them tearing the room apart and leaving it in utter disarray as they sought to find the box. They knocked over glass shelves of tiny objects and overturned tables and yanked drawers out of dressers. They were on the clock, and determined to leave no stone unturned. When Dean got discouraged, all he had to do was think about the possibility of Sophie getting dragged back to Hell, and he was furiously searching again.

What felt like an eternity later, but was actually only five minutes, they had torn apart the main room of the pawn shop so thoroughly that merchandise was strewn haphazardly across the floor. Nothing had escaped their purview. And yet there was no symbol-inscribed box to be found.

"Damn it," Sam grumbled as he looked through the final drawer in the room. He looked up at Dean. "There's no way we would've missed it," he said.

Dean scanned the room. "Remy could've been wrong," he considered. "Maybe it's not in plain sight. Maybe it's locked up in one of their dungeon-y back rooms."

Sam didn't look convinced. "We don't have the time to tear this whole building apart."

Dean shot Sam a glare. "Well if that's what it takes that's what we have to do."

"What part of 'they might call Beelzebub at any time to tell him that his seventeen-year-old key to world domination is holed up in New Orleans' don't you understand?"

Dean, who was standing near the front desk, couldn't contain his frustration. "Why the _hell_ can't this just be easy for us _once_?" he exclaimed, slamming his fist down onto the front desk with aggressive force.

As his fist collided with the surface of the desk, it shifted with an low clanking sound.

Both Sam and Dean immediately zeroed in on the desk. Dean's eyes were wide. "You heard that, right?"

Sam nodded eagerly, immediately squatting down and inspecting the front desk. He ran his hands around the edges of the counter, and after a moment, his thumb brushed over a tiny, almost imperceptible keyhole. As he did that, Dean removed the giant schedule covering the top of the desk, revealing a dark mahogany surface with intricately carved symbols.

"Woah," Sam breathed. "The countertop _is _the box! They built the box into the front desk."

"Judging by all the weird crap scribbled on here, I'd have to agree with you," Dean said, trying to remember what some of the symbols meant but being unable to recall them in his mind. He tried to lift the box up, but it had been soldered into the legs of the front desk, which were nailed onto the ground. "How the hell are we supposed to get it out of here?"

"The question you should be asking is how the hell _you _are supposed to get out of here."

Sam and Dean whipped their heads around to see two dragons standing on the opposite side of the room. Dean recognized one of them as the dragon that had pulled his unconscious daughter out of the car and dragged her into the pawn shop, and the other was female, with midnight black hair and even darker eyes.

When Dean didn't see Remy, he tried not to let the concern gnaw at him too quickly. "Easy," Dean replied smoothly. "I'm going to kill the crap out of you two idiots, and then my brother and I are going to grab some cool New Orleans swag from that back corner over there before we waltz happily ever after out the door."

The male dragon smirked. "It's funny. Your little angel friend has a similar sense of humor. It didn't do him any favors, and I doubt they'll serve you well either."

Dean tried not to let the comment about Remy get to him. Instead, he smirked right back at the dragon. "Listen, pal, people have been telling me for years that my hilarity will get me killed, and yet, here I am."

At that, the dark haired female dragon laughed. "You're rather confident for a man who died an incalculable number of times before failing to even keep his own daughter alive," she said coldly. "Do you find the imminent death and torture of Sophie Winchester funny, hunter?"

The levity faded from Dean's face. "You know, I was thinking of gutting Tall Dark and Handsome over there first, but you're sort of a bitch, and now I'm rethinking the whole thing."

The female dragon's eyes flashed. "I really, really don't like that word," she said in a low voice, and then she flung herself at Dean.

As Dean grappled with the surprisingly lithe and deadly female dragon, Sam started fighting the other dragon, and with Sam lacking in any dragon-killing object, and the female dragon proving incredibly difficult to kill, the fight turned dangerous quickly.

Dean watched out of the corner of his eye as the male dragon flung Sam into set of cabinets that cracked and splintered as his body crashed into it. Before he could do anything to help, the female dragon was back in his direct line of sight, hands glowing with fire and eyes glowing with murder. "You can't win," she hissed at him as she struck, trying to grab his head to break his neck. Dean dodged and swiped at her hand with his sword, but only hit air. "Even if you win today, you'll never defeat Beelzebub. You will never save your daughter."

Dean kicked out, his boot landing straight on the dragon's chest and sending her flying backwards. Teeth gritted, Dean walked up to her, intent on plunging the blade into her chest as she tried to get up. "Watch me," he growled, prepared to deal the death blow. But then her foot lashed out and kicked his ankle, and he lost his balance and fell backwards, letting go of the blade on the way down.

She immediately descended upon him, clawed hands wrapped around his neck as her evilly pretty face smirked down at him. "No," she said in a low voice. "Watch _me_."

He yelled out as her burning, clawed hands began to squeeze around his neck, burning and stabbing and cutting off his air. He tried to reach the blade, but it was just inches from his grasp, and he couldn't budge. He yelled out a strangled curse as he tried to throw the smiling dragon off of him and his vision began to darken.

And then he heard a long, high-pitched shriek, and when he opened his eyes wide he could see a long, slick blade sticking out of the dragon's chest. As she fell off of him, dead, Dean saw the hazy outline of Remy standing in front of him.

Remy leaned down and grasped Dean's hand, helping him up. The pain around Dean's neck was astounding, but he tried to ignore it as he saw the angel limp back a couple steps to catch his breath. When Dean looked closer, he saw that Remy's shirt was practically entirely covered in blood, and there were two large tears in the abdomen of his shirt.

"Stop looking at me like that, I'm fine," Remy wheezed. "Immortal, remember?"

Dean tried to ignore the tug he felt to make sure Remy really was okay, like he would for his own kid. Instead, he coughed out a couple times, knowing that his near death by strangling could not have helped the fact that he already was pretty sure he had strep throat. "Where's Sam?" he choked out.

"Alive. Broken ankle, but I can fix that. He's watching the last dragon. We secured him so that we could ask him some questions. Turns out dragons aren't entirely invulnerable to angel powers. I was able to curb his ability to produce fire, so there's no harm in directly approaching him."

At that, Dean nodded, coughing out a few more times, glancing at Remy more closely as his vision cleared up. "You don't look fine," he finally said.

"I also don't look like I know how to dance the waltz, and yet I do," Remy snapped. "Now come on, let me heal you so you can unleash all hell on that piece of crap."

"No, heal yourself first," Dean insisted, despite the burning agony he was in.

Remy rolled his eyes. "You Winchesters are such damn martyrs," he said under his breath, yanking Dean forward by tugging on his upper arm. Remy placed two fingers on Dean's head, and within seconds, the burning and the bleeding was gone.

Dean pulled away, annoyed. "Seriously, you look like hell. Did you get stabbed?"

"Angel blade," Remy admitted. "Didn't know that they had one. But I'm alive, aren't I? So turn off Father Mode for a moment and come figure out what this creepy bottom feeder knows."

Dean finally glanced over to the corner of the room, where Sam was watching a mostly constrained dragon. "Sophie's safe, right?"

"Would I be here if she wasn't?" Remy countered.

Dean realized Remy was right, and nodded, face devoid of emotion. "Alright then. Where's that dragon sword?"

Remy handed it to him, looking at him directly in the eyes. "You only need two pieces of information, Dean," Remy said slowly. "What Beelzebub knows about this, and what's in the box. Don't lose yourself over this."

Dean stared back at the angel, a little taken aback. He supposed he shouldn't be surprised that Remy knew about his…_tense _relationship with interrogating monsters, but it shocked him nonetheless. "I'm a grown up, Remy, I know what I'm doing," Dean finally said, his tone brusque, and then he turned and walked towards Sam and the dragon.

As he neared, his face lit up with a devastatingly dangerous light. "Well, if it isn't my man Puff the magic dragon."

The dragon lifted his head, and Dean saw that his broken blade had been used to stab through the dragon's hand and into the hardwood floor, the gruesome yet only way to keep him properly restrained. His face betrayed no hint of pain, only exhaustion, as his yellow eyes looked upon Dean in hatred. "My name is Dmitri," he snapped.

Dean nodded. "Of course it is," he said lazily. "So here's how this is gonna go down, Puff. I'm going to ask you some very simple questions. Answer them, and things might look up for you. Present problems for me, and you're in for a pretty rough afternoon. Got it?"

The dragon said nothing, and Dean took his silence as tacit compliance.

Dean squatted down on the balls of his feet, staring the dragon in the eye. "What are you doing with Beelzebub?" he asked.

The dragon smirked. "In or out of bed?" he asked.

Dean's face didn't change. "Does Beelzebub know about the box?" he asked. When the dragon said nothing, Dean turned quickly and snagged the dragon blade from Remy and quickly made a deep cut on the dragon's forearm. "Does Beelzebub know about the box?" he asked again in a low voice.

The dragon shrugged. "I don't believe so. It's never been our pillowtalk conversation of choice."

Dean stared at the dragon, getting the feeling that he was telling the truth. "What about the box? What's in it?"

At that, the dragon smirked. "I will gladly die before I help you, Winchester."

The blade sunk into his shoulder this time, causing the dragon to shriek out in agony as the blade impaled him to the wall he sat against. "I want to know what's in the box," Dean said coolly.

The dragon panted, looking at Dean in pained amusement. "Despite the fact that I will die today, it was worth it, you know? I got to see the kind of terror in little Sophie's eyes that I never get to see anymore. When I told her to take off her shirt so I could burn off that nifty little tattoo, she looked like I'd just asked her to cut off her own arm. Adorable, really. I wonder why she has that reaction? I mean, I could sense her virginity, but there's something off there, something damaged. Know anything about that?"

Dean knew he was only using Sophie to rile him up, and he'd be damned if he let that work again. It'd been his downfall too many times before, and it was because of how much he cared for her that he needed to be stronger than that. He knew that Sophie was unharmed and safe, far away from here, and he tried to focus on that as he stared at the dragon. "I'm going to ask one more time," Dean said in a low voice, restraining himself from killing the dragon right out. "What's in the box?"

And he slowly began to pull the blade out of the dragon's shoulder, centimeter by centimeter so that the pain was as excruciating as he could make it. The dragon writhed and yelled, cursing at Dean even as he emotionlessly withdrew the blade. Finally, when the blade was only halfway removed, the dragon screamed out, "It's a weapon! An ancient blade whose twin is Beelzebub's current weapon. It's one of the only things in the universe that can kill him!"

With that, Dean yanked the sword out of the dragon's shoulder, and with zero hesitation, plunged it right back into the dragon, straight through his heart.

He stood up, staring at Sam and Remy, who were looking at him cautiously, as if making sure he wouldn't explode in a fit of rage at any moment. But Dean just handed the sword to Remy and wiped his hands on his jeans. "We need to find a way to remove that box from the front desk," he said, not acknowledging any of the past several minutes. "And then we go find Sophie."

* * *

Sophie, as it turned out, was drowning in an ocean of worry back at the motel.

She had turned on the TV to try and create some sort of ambient noise in the background that might help dull the obnoxiously loud, concerned voice screaming in the back of her head, but it did nothing to help. She couldn't even sit down on the bed. She stood, pacing, checking her phone for the time or for missed calls, unable to sit still or stay calm. Her fingers restlessly played with the gun she kept on her at all times, just in case.

She was sick, and tired, and hurt by Margaret's death, but the adrenaline kept her up and kept her eyeing her gun at all times, just to make sure it was there.

And then, without warning, the door to the motel room flung open.

And Sophie, who was so tightly wound and who had the gun firmly placed in her hand, reacted on pure physical instinct.

She screamed, pointed the gun, and pulled the trigger.

"MOTHER OF — _OW_! WHAT THE HELL!"

When Sophie recognized the voice, she gasped and dropped the gun on the bed, looking at it in shock, as if it had been it and not her who had acted out of line. "Oooooh my god," she breathed. Then her voice got louder. "Oh my god, oh my god, Remy, I'm so sorry! Oh my god, are you okay? Oh my god, you're bleeding a lot, why do angels bleed so much, oh my god."

Remy emerged from the doorway, clutching his shoulder, which was bleeding profusely. Behind him, after they'd closed the door, Sam and Dean stood, Sam in utter shock and Dean looking like he was about one more "Oh my god" away from bursting into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

Sophie, ignoring the fact that her dad and uncle had arrived back from their mission unharmed, rushed up to Remy and moved to touch him, but stopped herself, her hands hovering over his shoulder, not even knowing what to do to try and help. "Holy crap, Remy, I…I'm so sorry…I didn't…you scared me…."

Remy looked down at her, wincing in pain. "No, it's fine," he said, voice dripping with sarcasm. "I only saved your ass from the creepiest dragon on earth, took an angel blade to the kidney, and had to listen to these two bitch about volume control all the way back here. Taking a pointless bullet to the shoulder is barely anything after all that."

"I'm sorry, you just scared me!" Sophie exclaimed, her face still white with terror and guilt. "Are you…are you okay?"

Remy looked almost offended as he walked further into the room and proceeded to strip off his shirt. Sophie was too preoccupied with the shocking amount of blood coating his bare skin to even notice the fact that he was standing in front of her shirtless. "Sophie. You _shot _me!" he exclaimed.

"But you're an angel," she said desperately and hopefully. "You…being shot doesn't do much, right?"

Remy threw her a disparaging look as he lifted his arm to remove the bullet in his shoulder, wincing as he did. "It freaking _hurts_," he snapped. "And that's not to mention what you've done to my fragile emotional state. I can't believe you _shot _me. You, of all people. Your father, sure, I would've seen that coming. But you?"

"I'm sorry!" she wailed, cringing at the pathetic desperation in her voice. "I just…. You should've called! Even a text. _Hey, Sophie, we're all alive and headed back to the motel, don't do anything rash_."

"You're going to blame your terrible knee-jerk reaction on the guy with a bullet hole in his shoulder?" Remy snapped.

"Yeah, Soph, I'm with Remy on this one," Sam finally said, the look of pure shock on his face fading. "You have to be more careful than that. You could've shot someone who _doesn't _immediately heal from flesh wounds. Like me. Or Dean. Right, Dean?"

Sam nudged Dean, who still looked like he was about to lose his mind to laughter. Dean just snorted. "If Sophie wants to shoot every one of her boyfriends from here on out, that just makes my job a hell of a lot easier," he said, and then he took one look at Sophie trying to help Remy with his shoulder and him swatting her hand away, and he burst into laughter. "God, wow, this is the scenario I never knew I needed to see."

Sophie looked over at Dean angrily. "For the last time, Remy is not my boyfriend! You're not helping anything!"

He frowned at her. "Can't you just be happy I'm alive and not burnt to a toasty crisp? Or, apparently, filled with bullets?"

Sophie groaned in exasperation and turned back to Remy. "I'm really, really, really sorry," she said. "Seriously, what can I do to help? I'll do anything you need me to do."

At that, Remy lifted his eyebrows mischievously. "Anything? Anything at all?"

Sophie hit him in his other shoulder. "C'mon, Remy, I'm serious. I already apologized a zillion times! What more can I do?"

"I mean, since you're asking, I accept sexual favors—"

"Alright, funny time over," Dean snapped, suddenly sobering up from what he had deemed the hilarity of Sophie's accidental shooting of Remy. "Remy, you're good, right? All the angel parts are working and whatever?"

"Besides my pride, I'm dandy," Remy grumbled, looking over at Sophie and glaring as he walked over and grabbed her duffle bag, pulling out one of Dean's shirts that she usually used as an oversized sleeping shirt. "This is the last time in a long time you're ever going to see me this close to being naked, so get a good look, Ace."

She rolled her eyes. "You're easy on the eyes, Remy, but you're not _that _hot. Get over yourself."

Dean made a gagging sound. "I hate that I can literally _feel _the sexual tension between you two. It's disgusting. _You_," Dean barked, pointing his finger at Remy, "are an angel, and she is a human, and if you so much as look at her in a way I don't like, I'm having Cas demote you to desk work in Heaven."

Remy looked affronted. "I just got shot, Dean. I'm not exactly looking to jump anyone's bones right now."

Dean ignored him, looking at Sophie. "Sam's right, by the way. Look first, then shoot. What if that had been a Girl Scout at the door?"

Sophie crossed her arms across her chest. "A Girl Scout would have knocked."

Dean shrugged and turned back to Sam. "She makes a fair point." Then he turned back to Sophie. "I change my mind, I kinda like the Shoot First Ask Questions Later mentality. Atta girl."

Sam took off his jacket and shook his head. "This is why fatherhood was thrust upon you as opposed to you actually being ready for it," he said after a moment.

"I'm choosing to take that as a weirdly inverted compliment." Dean jangled his keys in the air. "C'mon, Sammy, let's go grab our stuff out of the car."

"Why do you always try to take my criticism as a compliment, that's not conducive to the character development you so desperately need…."

Sophie looked back at Remy, ignoring her quarreling dad and uncle as they walked out the door and to the car. "Remy, I really am sorry," she said quietly, just so he could hear, and for some reason, tears sprang to her eyes. "I just freaked out, I didn't mean to hurt you, I'm so sorry—"

"Ace," Remy said after a moment, a look of amusement and resignation on his face. "I'm okay. A little worried you're so wound up you feel compelled to shoot at the first person who walks through the door, but okay. I'm probably going to tease you forever… but don't worry about it."

His eyes were dark green and tired, and she bit her lip. "I can't believe I shot you," she said, sniffing once, unsure as to why this was making her emotional and vaguely trying to count the number of days until her period in the back of her mind. "I…I'd never want to hurt you."

Remy laughed. "C'mon, Sophie, don't cry. I'm the one who just got shot, I should be the one crying."

At his laughter, Sophie couldn't help but let out a little smile. "I know, I just… I don't know, I feel bad for being so stupid."

Remy shrugged. "Just don't shoot me again, and I think we can patch up what remains of our tattered, broken friendship."

She smirked. "You're ridiculous sometimes."

"Says the girl who shot the first person who walked through the door."

"You're never gonna let me live this down, are you?"

"No chance in hell."

She just smirked, the last of her almost-tears gone away. When she glanced out of the window, she saw Sam and Dean pulling a large, cloth-covered object from the Impala. She turned back to Remy, eyes wide. "I completely forgot! So you guys…you found the box?"

Remy nodded, cleaning the rest of the blood off of his body and pulling the shirt in his hands over his head. "Yeah, it took quite a bit of a fight, and the dismantling of a piece of furniture that would've given IKEA a run for their money, but we got it."

Sophie didn't even bother to ask for a clarification; she didn't want it. She just looked up at him in shock. "So…we have a way to kill Beelzebub?"

Remy stared at her for a moment and nodded, exhaling slowly. "Yeah, Ace. I think we might."

Before she could ask any more questions, there came a loud knock at the door. "This is Dean. Dean Winchester. Your father. Co-giver of your life. Can I enter without fear of enemy fire?"

Sophie rolled her eyes as Remy smirked. "Just come in!" she shouted in annoyance.

The door opened slowly. "It's just me and Sam!" Dean shouted in a purposefully loud voice. "Don't shoot. We're unarmed—"

"Oh my god, I said I was sorry!" Sophie exclaimed.

Dean burst out into laughter as he and Sam walked through the door, and Sophie was chagrined to find that even Sam looked like it was costing him not to laugh with his brother. When she gave him a disapproving look, her uncle just shrugged. "Sorry, Soph, it's just…it's pretty funny."

"If it had been _your_ shoulder it wouldn't be funny," she grumbled.

"Eh, even then it's still a little bit funny," Remy teased.

Before she could respond, there came another knock at the door. Everyone tensed up, not knowing who it could be. Dean, in his effort to always lighten the mood, turned to Sophie and said, "Restrain yourself, sweetheart."

She rolled her eyes, but her heart was still beating a little faster. Who could be at the door? Had they missed a dragon? Had Beelzebub come for her? Or was it Sonny, with his face that plagued her nightmares and rendered her immobile with fear?

But when Dean looked through the peephole, he pulled back in confusion. He opened the door to reveal a tall, skinny man wearing a hotel uniform shirt. "Um, yeah?" Dean asked.

The man glanced inside the room, looking almost bored. "Good evening, sir. A guest reported what she said sounded like a gunshot coming from this area of the motel," he said in a monotonous voice. "I'm checking to see if everything's okay."

Dean turned back and gave the three of them a confused look before turning back to the man. "Uh, no, that was just my car backfiring when I tried to start it. Sorry for the confusion." Then he frowned. "Do you, uh, usually check in person when someone reports gunshots before calling the police?"

The man shrugged. "Happens often enough we usually check ahead."

Dean just stared at him. "Sounds safe," he said sardonically.

The man shrugged again. "Well, sorry to bother y'all. Have a great rest of your stay."

He turned to leave and Dean shut the door, turning around to look at the rest of them in shock. "Seriously, where the hell are we?"

"The sketchiest corner of New Orleans, Dad," Sophie reminded him. "There are so many cool places we could've gone, but you chose the block with one of the highest crime rates in the city."

"Well clearly," Dean remarked, gesturing towards Remy, who had pulled down the sleeve of his shirt to make sure he had properly healed himself from the gunshot wound.

Sophie just let out a big breath, accepting the fact that she was going to get made fun of for this for the rest of her life, however long that may be. "The box," she finally said, gesturing to the object lying across the bed, looking rather simple for something that was supposed to hold the key to killing Beelzebub. "Can we open it?"

"We couldn't," Sam told her. "But we're gonna have Remy and Cas take a closer look at it once we get it back to the bunker."

"So…you're not gonna give it to Crowley?" she asked.

"Hell no," Dean said, shaking his head. "I don't care what we told him, we're gonna try to crack this nut open before we offer him a chance to screw everything up."

Sophie bit her lip. "But…pissing off Crowley isn't generally a good thing, right?"

Dean nodded. "Yeah, but neither is giving him what he wants. Don't worry, Soph, Sam and I have been down this road more times than either of us want to admit. It'll be fine."

She didn't look convinced as she sat down on the edge of the bed, starting to feel just how incredibly exhausted she was. She'd been running on adrenaline for hours, and she had to remind herself that just this morning, she'd been hospitalized for dehydration. "I think I need a nap."

"You and me both," Dean said, and at that moment Sophie realized how terrible Dean looked. His eyes were tired and a little bloodshot, and he looked a bit paler than usual, and his voice was just a little bit strained, like it was sore or he'd been coughing a lot.

"Oh no," she said. "You're super sick, too."

"It's just a little cold," Dean said, waving her concerns away. "You're the one we need to be worried about."

Sophie shook her head. "I'm okay," she said. "Still tired, and still have a sore throat, but…whatever Margaret gave me at the hospital helped big time, and Remy healed all my injuries, so I'm okay. Just…regular sick, not super-crazy-about-to-die sick."

Dean gave her a look. "Well…still, I'd feel better if you took some medicine and got a decent night's worth of sleep before we head back."

Sophie nodded, glancing at her phone. It was only nine o'clock, but she was exhausted. It was crazy to think that just a few days before, she was getting in trouble at school for drinking, and now she was in New Orleans on a crazy dragon hunt.

"Okay," she said. "I'm just gonna take a shower, and then I'll try to get some sleep." She walked around to grab the things she'd need for the shower, and then a thought struck her, her head lifting up in excitement. "Can we get beignets tomorrow? And coffee?"

Dean shrugged. "I guess."

"I guess?" Sophie exclaimed. "We're in _New Orleans, _Dad. The correct answer to that was, 'Oh my god, Sophie, yes, what an excellent suggestion, we will definitely go get beignets and coffee and whatever else you want because I'm a generous father.'"

Remy snorted, Sam smirked, and Dean just frowned. "I never say 'oh my god' like that, because I'm not a teenage girl."

Sophie just shot him a grin. "You're just no fun sometimes," she sighed overdramatically, and then she gave Remy a quick look. "And you. Be nice to my shirt. I like it."

Remy grinned at her, looking almost surprised at himself for being amused. "Yes, ma'am," he laughed.

Sophie just nodded, satisfied, and disappeared into the bathroom.

When she had gone and the shower was turned on, Dean turned to Sam and Remy. "This box. How the hell are we gonna open it?"

"We're not," Remy said. "Not here. We need to do it in a safe place. We don't know what is actually in there, despite what the dragon told us."

Dean nodded. "Alright. So we bring it back to the bunker and see what Cas thinks before we start hacking away at it." His eyes focused more intently on Remy. "You're alright, right?"

"If you're referring to what your trigger-happy daughter did to me, yeah, I'm peachy. The emotional wounds will take longer to heal."

Dean scoffed. "Sure. And what about that stab wound?"

Remy just nodded."All patched up. There aren't that many perks to being an angel, but the short recovery time is one of them." He glanced at the shower door. "Sophie's fine, and we have the box. I should go. I told Ariel I would meet with her after the dragons, to let her know I was okay."

Dean looked at him carefully. "How is she?"

Remy's face was emotionless. "Better than she was," he said after a moment. "Still not great. But better." Before Dean could respond, Remy straightened himself up. "I'll check in later, but you won't see me."

And then he was gone.

**Hey guys! Admittedly, this chapter was a bit hastily thrown together and edited quite quickly, but it's been two weeks and I really wanted to get something out to you so I figured what the hell, why not. Thank you all for continuing to read and review despite the slower updates; I promise, I'm writing as fast as I possibly can.**

**But again, thank you thank you! You're all the coolest readers on the planet. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, feel free to lay 'em on me!**

**~ Lacey :)**


	95. Chapter 95: So Damn Dysfunctional

**This should probably be a more exciting/longer chapter on account of the fact that it's absurdly late, but I think we need some regular, non-dramatic interactions between the Winchester fam on occasion as well. So here ya go!**

_Chapter 95: So Damn Dysfunctional_

When Sam woke up the next morning in New Orleans, he blinked rapidly a few times, remembering the events of the day before and wondering what the hell was going to be their next step.

He glanced over at the other bed. Due to the fact that they were both sick as dogs, Dean had conceded to sharing a bed with Sophie the night before. She had gone to sleep pretty soon after her shower, and Dean had followed suit a few hours later after he and Sam had shared a couple beers and discussed the events of the day in low voices.

There had been a lot to discuss. The dragons, the box, Crowley, the increasingly obvious connection between Sophie and Remy that only seemed to have increased since their souls had been disconnected. Dean in particular hadn't seemed all to pleased about that, judging by all of the expletives he'd used when complaining about it.

Sam looked at his brother and his niece now. Sophie had stolen pretty much all the blankets and was completely cocooned within them, only her strawberry blonde hair and closed eyes visible. She was rolled up next to Dean, her forehead pressed against his chest, breathing in deeply. He had an arm thrown lazily over her shoulders, not curling around her, just resting over her, an unconscious gesture of protection.

But what Sam saw before anything else was that they were both sleeping deeply, looking more peaceful than they had in months.

The sight made the corner of Sam's mouth twitch upwards. If someone had told him a few years back that his older brother would find out he had a kid and then actually become a halfway decent father, he probably would have laughed in their face.

As it was, Sam just got up from bed, threw on a sweater over his T-shirt, and pulled on some tennis shoes. He'd let them sleep for now. God knew they needed it.

He grabbed his phone and wallet, took one last look at Sophie and Dean, and then went out for a short run.

Sam liked to think that it was something in his genes that made Sophie into a runner, because clearly, she didn't get it from Dean. Then again, Sophie liked running more than Sam ever did. Sam just did it because it was a cheap, easy way to stay in shape. Sophie actually liked running, liked getting so caught up in a race that she forgot how hard her body was working, liked walking back inside panting and sweating. She was the same with her schoolwork, back before she'd fallen behind. Whereas Sam had always done the work because it was the easiest way to escape the hunter's life, Sophie did it because she actually loved the work, loved studying, loved learning.

Sometimes, Sam was pretty sure he admired his niece more than anyone else.

Thinking through all of this, Sam jogged a couple blocks down to a local café, where he ordered three coffees and an order of beignets. The girl working the cash register gave him a shy smile as she handed him his food, and told him to have a good time in the city. He knew it was flirtatious, but didn't bother to capitalize on that fact. Instead, he simply nodded and thanked her before leaving.

He walked back to the motel, soaking in the beautiful southern fall morning, food swinging in one hand and the carrier holding the three coffees in the other. He didn't get a lot of moments to just be with himself anymore. Over the past several months, they'd been worrying about saving Dean from damnation, then about bringing Sophie back to life, then about helping her recover from the trauma of Hell. This was the first moment in a while that they'd just been able to…breathe.

And it was nice. And a little foreboding. Because if Sam knew anything, it was that these moments never lasted for too long.

When Sam got back to the motel, he could hear Dean and Sophie inside. They were awake, and by the sound of it, they were arguing about something.

Sam smirked and used the hand carrying the bag of beignets to knock on the door. "I come bearing gifts!" he called out, hearing the voices in the room cease immediately. "Are all firearms a safe distance away from Soph?"

He heard an frustrated grumbling, and then the door flew open to reveal his niece, looking up at him with annoyed green eyes that looked so startlingly like her dad's that Sam was amazed that there was ever a time they doubted she was Dean's kid. "I think it's time we all moved past this whole shooting Remy thing," she told him matter-of-factly. "The guy's immortal, it's not like anything happened."

In surrender, Sam held up the bag of beignets and the coffee. "Forgive me?" he asked with a smile touching his lips.

Sophie eyed the coffee with a rapidly declining willpower. "Just this once," she finally conceded, and then let him into the room.

"So what were you two fighting about?" Sam asked as he set the food and coffee down onto the small table in the motel room, glancing up to see Dean pulling his jacket on over a long-sleeved shirt.

"Dad's acting like a baby because I got him sick," Sophie said. "But, I mean, I feel fine right now and I was _hospitalized_ yesterday, so it should pass for him pretty soon."

As if on cue, Dean coughed twice, sounding infinitely worse than he had the day before. "I haven't been sick in forever," he grumbled, his throat raw and voice congested and nasally. He glared at Sophie. "And it's all your fault."

"Fluids," was all Sophie said. "Fluids and DayQuil. You'll be good as new in no time."

"Oh shut up and hand me a coffee," he grunted.

"What did you tell me?" Sophie teased, grabbing the third coffee and keeping it away from Dean's outstretched hand and annoyed facial expression. "Coffee when you're sick is bad because it's a diuretic, and as we all now know, you need to remain hydrated, or else you might end up—"

Dean walked up and snatched the coffee out of her hand. "I am _your _parent, not the other way around. I can do whatever the hell I want, and you can't, and those are the rules. The end."

Sophie shrugged in mild surrender. "Suit yourself."

"I will," Dean snapped, but his voice tapered off at the end and he glared, taking a long draw of his coffee before coughing a few times. He gave Sophie a withering look. "You're never allowed to get sick again."

"Tell that to my immune system," she said, sitting down and pulling a beignet out of the bag, staring at it hungrily.

"Or just avoid sitting out in below freezing weather in nothing but a sheet," Dean offered, and at that, both Sam and Sophie turned and gave him surprised and hurt looks, Sophie out of personal disappointment and Sam as though offending Sophie had offended him. Immediately, Dean's face fell. "I'm sorry," he said. "That was mean."

Sophie nodded, looking away from him. "Yeah, it was," she said under her breath. So much had happened in the last day or so that it was hard to forget that the incident with Wes had been just a few days before.

"Soph, I didn't mean it," Dean said, not even knowing what exactly it was that he didn't mean, but not any less apologetic for it.

She nodded. "I know," she said, grabbing her coffee and taking a long drink of it. "It's alright, I just don't want to think about it anymore, okay?"

Dean nodded quickly. "Works for me."

Satisfied, she took a beignet in her hand and took a bite, promptly causing her eyes to roll back into her head. "Oh my god, this is amazing," she exclaimed. "New Orleans, you may have the headquarters of the dragon mafia, but you also have some dang good pastries."

Dean made a disgusted look. "How could you be so sick yesterday and be so okay today?"

Sophie shrugged. "I'm resilient."

Dean snorted, but after a moment of thought, he realized that _resilient _was actually the perfect word to ascribe to his daughter, what with her experiences with Heaven, Hell, and everything in between.

"When are we going home?" Sophie asked after a moment of silence, as Sam and Dean drank their coffees and the pile of beignets slowly disappeared.

"Soon as we finish up here," Sam said. "I know you wanted to see this city, but—"

"It's okay," Sophie cut him off, waving away his concern, and doing so sincerely. "I'm kind of ready to go back. Not gonna lie, this city's a little tainted for me now." She finished off the rest of her coffee and sighed. "Besides, I've gotta face school now that I've had my Come to Jesus moment and decided not to screw myself over for the rest of my academic career. I probably need to apologize to a lot of people, too."

Sam gave her a sympathetic grin. "Well, at least you've got the whole trip back to think about it beforehand."

She groaned. "Was that an attempt to comfort me?"

"I'm guessing it didn't work."

She just shook her head, tossing her empty cup in the trash. "I'm gonna pack my stuff up, then I'll be ready. And Dad? You should really cover your mouth when you cough."

Dean looked up at her with a red-eyed glare. "Stop enjoying this," he mumbled.

"I'm not," Sophie said, sounding offended. "I'm just taking advantage of it to get in some of the jabs I've been too drunk to make for the past month."

Dean just shook his head. "We are so damn dysfunctional," he said under his breath, looking over at Sophie. "Alright, go get ready, I wanna be out of here in ten."

"Aye aye, captain."

As Sophie disappeared into the bathroom to grab anything she'd left in there, Sam shot Dean a smirk. "You sound so disgusting," he taunted.

"Yeah well you…_look _disgusting," Dean shot back, knowing it was the weakest of comebacks but doing all he could to sell it.

Sam just rolled his eyes and threw away the now empty bag of breakfast pastries. "We'll stop and grab you some meds on the way out, and then you should probably let me or Sophie drive the first part of the way home."

"What?" Dean exclaimed in outrage. "No freaking way."

"Aw, c'mon, Dad," Sophie said as she emerged from the bathroom with a handful of shampoo bottles, brushes, and deodorant. "I'm honestly a good driver, no thanks to your tutelage."

"I'm not worried about your driving, I'm worried about your music!" Dean exclaimed, standing up and starting to shove everything he owned into his duffle. "I'm already dying from the plague, I don't need consecutive hours of Taylor Swift to worsen my condition."

Sophie was about to retaliate when Sam cut in. "I'll take the first shift, and we'll see how everyone's doing in a few hours. All good?"

Sophie just huffed. "I don't understand why you always have to be so mean to Taylor, Dad," she said as she gathered the rest of her things into her arms.

Dean rolled his eyes. "I'm objectively sicker now than I was before you said that."

Sophie chose to ignore that, walking towards the door and glancing back over her shoulder. "I'm gonna wait outside, in the fresh air. As in, not in here," she told them, before disappearing out of the door.

As Sam and Dean finished packing, they glanced over at the box they'd brought into the motel room for safekeeping. "Think we'll be able to bust it open?" Sam asked.

Dean shrugged. "We'll figure it out like we always do."

Sam didn't look so sure. "Well, I guess we'll find out when we get back," he said with a long exhale. He grabbed his stuff, picked up the box, and made his way out of the door.

After a couple coughs and an attempt at a dignified sniffle, Dean grabbed his things and followed suit.

* * *

As it turned out, Sophie and Sam did end up driving the whole way home, as Dean remained sprawled across the backseat. He only woke up four brief times throughout the entire trip, once to ask for a beer ("No, Dean, you can have a water"), and three times to complain about the music ("Calling Adele garbage is just uneducated, Dad").

Other than that, it was a peaceful ride back. Sam and Sophie took turns at the wheel, and for the first time in a long time, Sophie had some quality time with her uncle, even though Dean was forever snoring in the backseat. They chatted, sang along horribly to some songs that would've made Dean's ears bleed if he'd been conscious enough to hear them, talked about books they'd both read and movies they'd both seen. But after a while on the road they'd exhausted all of the banal conversation, and somehow, the subject moved to school.

"So," Sam said after their conversation about _The Breakfast Club _had died down, "did you ever finish that extra credit assignment for your English class?"

Sophie, who was sitting in the passenger seat at that time, nodded. "Yeah."

He glanced over at her for a moment. "Think any of your other teachers will give you extra credit?"

Sophie shrugged. "I don't know," she admitted. "Mr. D is one of the only teachers that's been invested in me, since the whole, you know, downward spiral thing. But…maybe. I don't know."

Sam took a moment to think about his response. "You know," he started slowly, "we'll both be proud of you no matter what, right? I mean, going somewhere like Stanford, or going _anywhere_ for college honestly, it'd be amazing, but…if you decide not to, Dean and I are gonna be proud of you. You've already accomplished more than anyone your age is supposed to."

Sophie glanced over at him, and he was staring at the road ahead, clearly waiting for her response. She took a long moment to gather her thoughts, trying to find out how to be honest with both herself and with him.

"I don't know yet," she said truthfully. "I want that life, the four years of college, the normalness. But…I don't know, it just seems so far away."

"It doesn't have to be," Sam told her.

"I know," Sophie sighed. "But ever since Hell…I want that life, and I don't. It's… complicated."

Sam nodded "Believe me. I get it."

She just stared out of the window. "Yeah," she said in a soft voice, suddenly feeling like crying. It was like every insecurity and fear that she'd had before Hell had been amplified a hundred times, and now, she wasn't dulling it with alcohol. And she was strong, but not emotionless. And right now, she wanted to break down.

Sam could sense the shift in her voice, and he looked over at her in concern, seeing her eyes shining a little and her arms folded tightly over her chest. "Hey," he said apologetically, taking one hand off the wheel and setting it on her shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. "You don't have to know anything yet. You don't have to be sure of anything at all. I just… I don't know, I just didn't want you to think we somehow were disappointed in you in any way."

She grinned a little at that, blinking back her tears. "Thanks," she said, the knot in her throat so large it made it painful to speak. It came out a little raspy, but she didn't waver. She cleared her throat, the stinging in her eyes slowly receding. "So, um, how far are we from the bunker?"

Sam glanced at the time on the dashboard. "Maybe eight hours." He shifted in his seat and looked at her. "I should've asked earlier, how're you feeling?"

Sophie snorted. "Better than Dad."

"Well, yeah, but yesterday you were in a hospital."

She shrugged. "I'm not a hundred percent yet, I mean I'm a little tired and my throat still hurts a little, but I'm good, really."

Sam nodded, believing her. "Good." He paused. "So, does that mean you're ready to go back to school post-suspension?"

Sophie gave him an annoyed look. "Is that your way of asking if I'm going to go back and continue to allow my life to completely implode? Because if it is, then I'm not going to do that. I'm gonna try to fix things. At least, I'll try to fix things with my teachers."

The road was disappearing beneath them quickly, but it seemed to stretch out for miles and miles ahead no matter how much distance they covered. "You know, you can fix things with Jack and Jamie, too," Sam said, knowing that's what she was worried about. "They're good kids, and they love you."

Sophie continued to stare at the road ahead. "Yeah," she said quietly. "I just…I can't just backpedal. I don't want to get back together with Jack, and things can never be the same with Jamie if her twin and I will always be exes, and it's just..."

"High school," Sam laughed after a moment. "I really, really don't miss it."

"Tell me about it," Sophie groaned. "All my life I thought that the high school drama you see in movies and read about in books was just exaggerated and made up, but now I'm realizing there's some truth to it. High school kind of sucks."

Sam nodded. "It does. You know what doesn't suck?"

"What?"

"College."

Sophie couldn't help but laugh and gently hit Sam's arm, not enough to make him lose control of the car but enough to get her point across. "No pressuring me, Sam," she said in only partially joking sternness.

"Alright, alright, I'll go easy on you," he relented. "I'll even let you pick the music."

Her eyes widened in feigned childlike surprise. "Really? Golly gee, Sam, I've never felt more special in my whole entire life."

He rolled his eyes and gestured towards the Impala's radio. "Go nuts."

Sophie shrugged and changed it to some pop music station, sitting back in her seat. And as some Nicki Minaj song thrummed through the air, Sophie smiled. Because despite whatever lay in wait down the road, she and her family were back at full power.

And that could only mean good things.

* * *

When they finally got back to the bunker, it occurred to Sophie that she had to go back to school the next day.

After sleeping for a majority of the nearly full day it took to get back to Lebanon, Dean was already feeling a lot better, but not enough to quit whining as they unpacked all of their stuff from the Impala to bring inside. "For the love of God, Sophie, we need to have a serious conversation about how much crap you own," he grumbled, dumping one of her bags on the ground.

"You didn't have to bring my bag in, Dad, I'm a capable human being," Sophie pointed out.

"I'm being a gentleman," Dean defended pompously. "But seriously, when we brought you here you literally only had the clothes on your back and now you have more garbage than Sam and I combined."

"That's all on you, you're the one who bought most of it," Sophie said, running to the kitchen to get a snack.

"No, that's _your _fault, you mastered the art of the puppy eyes."

"They're _your_ eyes, so we're back to it being _your_ fault," Sophie called from the kitchen.

Sam clapped Dean on the back as he passed by him. "You're fighting a losing battle here, Dean, she's way smarter than either of us."

"More stubborn, I'd say," Dean grumbled, kicking Sophie's bag into a corner and coughing once into his elbow. "Hey, Soph! If you're such a capable human, come get the rest of your stuff while I go to bed and slowly die!"

Sophie waltzed back in, holding a granola bar in one hand and using the other to put her hand on her hip. "What happened to being a gentleman?"

"The plague, that's what happened," Dean remarked, coughing into his arm.

"Shouldn't you just go lay down and sleep, then?" Sophie said, walking over and grabbing her bag. "Or maybe eat some soup or something?"

"Shouldn't you be going to bed, too?" Dean shot back. "You have school tomorrow, remember?"

She glared at him. "Thanks for the reminder."

Sam looked over at her. "Are you good to go?" he asked in concern. "I mean, it's been a crazy last few days, I wouldn't blame you if—"

She shook her head. "No, I need to go. If I make excuses today I'll just keep making them. Like _some _unnamed Winchester."

"They're not excuses, I'm actually sick!" Dean exclaimed in disbelief. "When did it become acceptable to be extra mean to someone after being the reason that they're sick?"

Sophie shrugged. "Sorry, you're just easy to annoy right now, it's kind of funny."

Dean rolled his eyes. "It won't be funny when I take you to school tomorrow."

She looked at him with wide eyes. "What? No! I can take myself to school."

"You can," he said, "except your principal wants me to come in and register you for your alcohol awareness course."

She groaned, taking an angry bite of the granola bar. "I honestly think I've more than learned my lesson," she complained. "I almost lost it to a rando in a bar, and they want to punish me by making me read about how much alcohol is in a shot versus how much is in a beer? It's not a warning, it's a bartending class!"

Dean tried not to cringe at the memory of Sophie and Wes. "It'll be good for you," he said gruffly. "And honestly, you're lucky that an online class is all you have to do. Remember when you got _arrested_?"

Sophie waved his reasoning away. "Fine, fine, whatever, I'll grin and bear it, blah blah, I'm going to bed." She hoisted her bag up and turned to leave before pausing and looking back. "Also, there's NyQuil in the cabinet, and you should probably eat some soup or something before you go to sleep. Preferably something with salt."

"Sure thing, _Mom_," he grunted, but he couldn't help but grin a little.

She just shrugged. "Goodnight," she said before walking out of the room. But she couldn't help but smile, too.

* * *

"Sophie?"

"Hm."

"Why are my radio stations all messed up?"

Sophie looked up from the book in her lap and glanced over at Dean, who was driving her to school. It was a beautiful fall day, which annoyed her. She wanted it to be gross and grey outside, because then everyone at school would be too busy complaining about the weather to talk about her. As it was, however, she was likely to be the talk of the halls. "If you're asking why your musical selection has suddenly improved dramatically, I'm gonna choose to respond with a simple 'you're quite welcome.'"

Dean switched through his preset stations, making a revolted sound when he heard a dubstep beat drop. "I'm pretty sure that's the equivalent of a digitalized bowel movement."

"Ew, Dad, you're disgusting," Sophie said, flipping a page in the book in her hands and descending into silence again.

Dean looked over at her. "Whatcha got there?"

"A book," she said distractedly.

He resisted the desire to roll his eyes. "Well, yeah, you just haven't been reading a lot of those recently."

She nodded. "Yes, well, remember all those days of angst and teenage turmoil where I languished over my terrible, layers-of-black-eyeliner inducing life? Remember how I made the very mature, very adult decision to move past that? Well, part of that involves doing well in school. And I have an English test today."

"Today?" Dean asked in shock. "But you've been suspended, there's no way you're ready."

"I'm not, and honestly, I'm sure Mr. D would give me a couple days to study. But I can't keep making excuses. So I spent all last night reading one of the four books on the exam, and I'm skimming through this second one. I should be able to pull off a C or a B with this amount of knowledge, but if I can just prove to my teachers that I'm willing to try…maybe they'll give me a second shot."

Dean was quiet for a moment as they drove down the quiet Kansan highway. He looked back over at Sophie, and then he smirked. "Layers-of-black-eyeliner inducing life?" he repeated with a laugh.

"Oh just shut up and let me read," Sophie grumbled good-naturedly.

They drove in relative silence the rest of the way to the school, interrupted only by Dean's complaints about resetting his music stations. When they pulled into the parking lot, Sophie tucked her book into her backpack and redid her ponytail. "Okay," she said quickly. "You're going to register me for my high school AA class—"

"Not what it is, but yes," Dean said.

"And I'm going to go take a test and schmooze all my teachers until they believe I care about school again," she continued, looking at her dad in determination. "I can do this."

"Of course you can, kiddo," Dean told her, looking at her unwavering face in amusement. "Whatever happens, I'm proud of you."

Sophie grinned, and then she just shoved his shoulder. "You're killing me with the chick flick moments, Dad, turn it down a notch."

"Me?" Dean exclaimed. "Take a look in the mirror, sweetheart, you're a walking, talking soap opera."

She rolled her eyes and opened up the passenger side door. "Well, who doesn't like an episode of _Days of Our Lives _every now and then?" she asked sarcastically.

"Literally no one does," Dean replied. "Now get out of the car and go kick high school's ass, ya hear?"

Sophie smirked, grabbing her backpack before leaning over and giving him a short hug. "I will," she said quickly.

Before he could respond, she'd slid out of the car and started briskly walking towards the school building.

And Dean couldn't help but think that every moment of his life since Sophie had waltzed into it had been a chick flick moment.

And if he were being honest with himself, he wouldn't have it any other way.

**Wow, I got so much feedback on the question I posed what feels like a thousand Saturdays ago, so thanks! Y'all seem pretty split on new story or sequel, so I guess I'll just see where the tide takes me. A lot of you pointed out that after pretty much two solid years of writing this story, I might be a little burned out (which, I mean, I love this story, but you have a fair point), so maybe writing a new story would help fan the creative flames again. If a sequel is meant to be it'll be. **

**Also, some of you asked for a sisfic, but honestly, there are already so many amazing sisfics out there that I really think you'd be better served by being directed to them instead. If you want any recs, feel free to ask, but I'm not quite as into actually ****_writing _****a sisfic. But anyway, thanks for your feedback, it was so helpful!**

**Also, thanks for your patience on this chapter. As one commenter said, I know it'd be more fair to stick to a regular schedule, and I really try to, but life happens and I'm only human. It was finals week, ya feel?**

**Until next time! ~ Lacey :)**


	96. Chapter 96: The Day Off (Part One)

_Chapter 96: The Day Off (Part One)_

Sophie stared in her locker in frustration.

There were about twenty books inside that she was supposed to have finished or eventually get to finishing throughout the rest of the year, not accounting for all the textbooks and math worksheets and science charts she was supposed to have memorized for her other classes. And she had done basically none of it.

If she wanted to get back in the game at school, she had a hell of a lot to catch up on. She needed to eliminate all distractions. She needed to get a grip on her life. She needed to—

"Winchester!"

Sophie turned at the familiar voice to see the smiling face of Mason looking at her.

So much for no distractions.

She sighed, grabbing two books from her locker and closing the door. "Mason, listen—"

"I can't believe you got _caught_," he laughed, looking at her in amusement. "What'd I always say, wait till the final bell and get in the back lot—"

"Mason, stop it," Sophie snapped, cutting him off. "Our little…alcoholic tryst, whatever this freak friendship was, it's _way _over."

Mason frowned, overdoing it as if he were on camera, like it was all for show. It was a frown that might as well have been another smile. "Aw, c'mon, Soph, we had a good time."

"No, we had a terrible time!" Sophie told him harshly. "All we did was get plastered and complain about how crappy our lives were! And sure, our lives aren't daisy fields and rainbow waterfalls but we sure weren't doing anything to make them better!"

Mason's fake frown turned into a real one. "Sophie, jeez, what gives? One trip to the principal's office and you're back to your straight-laced, good-two-shoed existence?"

Sophie stuffed her books into her backpack and glared at him, thinking that if he knew just how _not _true that statement was, he'd have nightmares for the rest of his life. "Yeah, Mason, I guess that's what that means," she said. "And maybe you should think about it, too. You're smart, you can still get your way to school and have a life outside of bars and slutty women."

Mason just shook his head. "I can't believe you were scared that easily by Grayling," he said, ignoring her comment about him. "Pathetic."

"No Mason!" Sophie snapped in a low voice. "I was scared that easily by the random guy at a bar that I almost slept with because I just didn't care about anything anymore! _That_ was my wake up call! What's gonna be _yours_, estranging yourself from every family member and friend that gives half a damn you're living and breathing? Or is it gonna be when you wake up in a hospital dying from alcohol poisoning before realizing nobody _does _care and you're there all by your damn self?"

Mason just looked at her for a moment, clearly trying to decide whether to be offended, angry, or pass it off like she hadn't just hit him where it hurt. Ultimately, he just smirked. "You almost slept with someone you met at a bar? Maybe you're not the good-two-shoes I pegged you as," he teased, taking two steps closer to her, trapping her between the lockers and his body without even touching her. "Whataya say, Winchester, I've got a comfy backseat, we can go and see just how rogue you've gone."

Sophie shoved him off of her, smacking his shoulder none too gently as he laughed. "Stop pretending you're some womanizing, devil-may-care badass with an oh-so-cool drinking habit," she told him angrily, not sure why she cared so much about this kid and making him see sense. Or maybe she knew why; they were alike, as much as she didn't want to admit it. They both had done a lot of stupid stuff to try and bury all of the dark stuff in their lives. "You're not cool, Mason. You're seventeen, you're in high school, you have daddy issues, and because you're too proud to admit you have problems, you try to shove them down with booze and naked women! And I can't help you do that anymore, Mason, I just can't!"

He stared at her, his eyes fluctuating between surprised and angry. He took another step closer to her, looking increasingly more pissed than disbelieving. "You're a piece of work, Sophie Winchester," he said through gritted teeth. "If you think you actually know me you're delusional."

"Hey, Ace, is there a problem?"

Sophie turned her head to see that Remy had seemingly materialized out of nowhere to stand right beside her, glaring unabashedly at Mason. In turn, she glared unabashedly at Remy. "No," she said sharply.

Remy looked back at Mason. "Is that so?"

Mason stepped back, looking at Sophie in annoyance. "Yeah," he said. "She just…owes me a crap ton of money for alcohol." He looked at her for a little longer, and then just shook his head. "You _don't _know me," he mumbled, and at that moment, Sophie knew she was in his head. And he just turned around and walked away.

She felt Remy looking at her, and she readjusted her backpack. "This isn't Degrassi, Remy," she snapped shortly. "I can handle a hallway conversation without a tall, handsome, thirty-year-old-actor-posing-as-a-teenager barging in to save the day!"

"I know," Remy said, shrugging. "But it's sure fun."

Sophie groaned. "This is why you don't have many friends."

"Why would anyone need a bunch of friends when they could just have you to pick on all day?" Remy asked with that signature mischievous twinkle in his eye.

Rolling her eyes, Sophie just sidestepped him. "Listen, I've gotta take a test today amid picking up the pieces of my shattered social life. Pick on me at the bunker, okay?"

"Your wish is my command," Remy laughed, and he sauntered away from her to his own locker.

Sophie just sighed and walked quickly down the hall to her English classroom. It was a few minutes early, but she didn't want to run into anyone else in the hall, so she ducked into the class and shut the door.

She was the only student in the room, and Mr. D was at the whiteboard, writing down some directions for the test. He turned when he heard the door open and shut, and looked surprised to see her. "Sophie," he said in his perpetually pleasant tone. "You're not usually the first to class."

She shoved her hands in her pockets. "Yeah, um…I just misjudged the time I guess."

Mr. D eyed her in mild suspicion. "I read your extra credit paper," he said after a moment. "I've gotta say, I was surprised. It was…excellent."

Sophie nodded, looking down. "Yeah, I…I'm gonna work harder from now on."

Mr. D kept looking at her, as if at any moment she'd laugh and say she was pulling a fast one on him. "Does this have anything to do with your suspension?"

She couldn't help but let the annoyance leak into her facial expression. "No offense, but I don't think it really matters _why _I decide to try in your class, just as long as I actually _do_."

Mr. D took her short fuse in stride. "I suppose you're right."

At his unrelenting kindness, Sophie deflated. She really needed to start acting less like her dad and more like herself, at least in school. "I'm sorry, Mr. D, that was rude."

Mr. D just grinned. "It's okay, Sophie, I understand. Life is rough, you don't have to share it all with your English teacher. That'd probably be weird." Sophie just shrugged, and Mr. D crossed his arms over his chest. "How do you feel about today's test?"

She shrugged again.

He sat on the side of the desk, watching her closely. "Did you read the books?"

Sophie thought about lying, but figured she'd done enough of that in the last month to last her a lifetime or two. "I was able to read one last night, and most of one this morning. But I didn't get to the other two."

Mr. D stared at her, and she had to look away from the blue-eyed gaze that weirdly seemed to know her. "Take it next Monday."

Sophie looked up in shock, shaking her head. "No," she said. "No, Mr. D, I should take it today, I deserve just as much prep time as anyone else—"

"Nope," Mr. D said, getting back up off the desk and grabbing the stack of tests, walking through the students' currently empty seats and placing test booklets on the tables. "You deserve a second chance, just like anyone else. So, you take it Monday. But you better be prepared."

She thought about arguing again, but then he made eye contact with her, and she realized that for once, she just needed to shut up and let someone extend some mercy to her.

"I will be," she said quietly.

"Good," Mr. D said. He tossed the extra test booklets on his desk and picked up a single piece of paper on the corner of the desk. "Also, here's another extra credit assignment. Turn it in by the time you take the test on Monday."

Sophie almost felt like crying as she took the paper from him. "Why?" she asked him.

There was a lot loaded in that one word. _Why me? __Why do I deserve this? Why are you being so good?_

"Because I can tell you have worlds of potential, Sophie," Mr. D said with a gentle look. "And you finally seem ready to capitalize on it. The least I can do is give you the means to do so."

Sophie looked at the paper in her hands, reading the prompt he gave her four times without actually reading it. "I…thanks," she said softly.

He grinned at her. "Why don't you spend this period in the library? Get a head start on that reading you need to do."

Wondering what exactly she'd done to deserve any kind of mercy, but deciding not to spit in the face of the forces at work, she nodded. "Okay. Um, thanks again, Mr. D. Really."

He simply nodded, and just as more students began to file into the class, ready to take their test, Sophie fled to the library, ready to take her second chance.

* * *

"Hello?"

_For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder…._

"Helloooo? Sophie, are you in there?"

…_He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city…._

"Earth to Sophie! We have important matters to discuss!"

…_It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past._

"Sophie Winchester!"

Sophie looked up from the book she'd just finished, closing it softly in her hands with a frown on her face as she stared at her door, which was currently getting pounded on ferociously. She hated getting pulled so abruptly from her reading, especially towards the end of the book. "Oh my god, what, Dad?"

Dean opened the door to her room. "No book is more interesting than me, sweetheart, so I don't know why it took so long to respond."

Sophie held up the book in her hand. "It's _The Great Gatsby_, Dad, arguably the most famous American novel. You couldn't wait thirty seconds for me to read the last page?"

"Sometimes I have a hard time deciding who's the bigger nerd, you or Sam," was all Dean said in reply, pulling her desk chair over and sitting on it backwards, folding his arms across the back of the chair. "So listen, we need to talk about school."

Sophie had to fight hard not to roll her eyes as she lifted the book in her hand. "I'm doing the school thing right now, actually."

"It's just a few days until December," he said matter-of-factly. "And I was talking to Sam, and he said most college applications are due in less than a month."

"I know," Sophie said with a nod, hating that she sounded a little defensive. "I'm working on it."

"How?" Dean asked gruffly.

"Get off my back, Dad, I know what I have to do," she snapped. His eyes widened a bit, but he didn't say anything immediately. She wilted. "I'm sorry, it's just…it's a subject that's kind of been stressing me out lately."

"Why?"

"I signed up to take the SAT and ACT again, and I'm getting my grades back up slowly but surely, but I still have to find a teacher that will write me a recommendation and I have to write essays and I have to find a way to explain the fact that I've been suspended," she said quickly. "Or else I don't know why any college would take me."

Dean looked at how stressed out his daughter was, and even though he knew it was unfair to himself to feel the way he did, he couldn't help but start blaming himself. The only reason Sophie had been having such a hard time was because he'd let her die and go to Hell. This was his fault.

He rested his chin on his hands, looking at her for a moment longer before saying, "You know there's no one else in the world who deserves a fresh start more than you do, right?"

She just shrugged. "It's not like I can state my case to every admissions committee at every college I apply to, they'd think I belong in an asylum, not a university."

"I know, I just…even if you weren't a Winchester, if you hadn't been tangled up in hunting because of me and Sam…you're a hell of a smart kid, Soph. You're special. And if you don't believe me, ask Uncle Stanford over in the next room. He knows smart when he sees it, and he sees it in you. And hell, maybe somewhere like Stanford or Harvard will let you slip through the cracks, and that sucks for them, but you've got too much talent for every school to let you go." He gave her a small, encouraging smirk. "If you want to go to college, kiddo, someone's gonna let you in, I can guarantee it."

She looked up at him with a grin. "And not because you get Cas to brainwash them into letting me in?"

Dean considered what she said. "You know, I hadn't even thought about that. That certainly broadens our horizons."

"Dad!" Sophie laughed. "No cheating on this one."

"I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding," Dean said with a small grin, glad to hear her laugh. "You'll get in fair and square. You really will." He looked at her for another moment again. "You're really taking the SAT and ACT again?"

"I've only taken them once before," she said defensively.

"You got at 1510 on the SAT and a 33 on the ACT, what more can you ask for?"

"Higher scores," she said plainly. "Which I'm going to need to make up for the hit my GPA is gonna take after this semester."

"Whatever you say," Dean sighed. "Guess I can't really be the authority on this, I barely got my GED." He lifted his head off the chair. "Listen, I also should tell you, Cas and Remy are gonna be here in a little while to help us bust open this damn dragon box."

Sophie shrugged. "And you're telling me this because…?"

"Because I want you to go into town while we're doing it. Hit up a bookstore, get some coffee, buy a pair of shoes, I don't really care. I just don't want you here while we're working on it."

Sophie's eyes narrowed. "No way. You don't get to kick me out during the exciting stuff."

"Not only do I get to kick you out," Dean said as he lifted himself off of the chair and tucked it back under her desk, "I also am forcing you to hang out with your very favorite personal bodyguard."

"You're gonna stick me with Remy all day?" Sophie exclaimed, now annoyed enough to get out of bed. "Dad, come on, I was really having a good day—"

Dean looked at her like she was insane. "All you've done is lay in bed and read all morning."

"Exactly."

He shook his head. "If my options are you having a good day of being the world's biggest nerd and reading books by dead people or you staying alive and safe, which option do you think I'm going to take?"

Sophie glared at him. "You're so annoying."

"I prefer 'loving father concerned with the wellbeing of his danger-prone daughter,' but I'll take annoying if that's all you're offering."

"It is," Sophie said with little gusto. She sighed. "So when is the Winged Killjoy getting here?"

Sophie was entirely unsurprised to here a familiar fluttering, and an amused voice say, "The Winged Killjoy? Is that my superhero name? Does it at least come with a cape?"

Without even turning to look at Remy, whom Sophie knew was right beside her, she gave her dad an exasperated look. "Dad, you can't make me spend the rest of the day with him."

"You're right," Dean said. "Except for the fact that you're wrong."

Sophie groaned and turned to look at Remy. "Listen up, I have a lot to do today, so you can't distract me."

"Nice to see you too, Sophie, how've you been?"

"We're going to a coffee shop," she continued in her strictest voice. "I'm bringing my laptop and writing an essay. You're going to sit there silently like a pretty angel mannequin until I'm done. Got it?"

Remy's dark green eyes flashed in amusement. "You think I'm pretty?"

Sophie groaned. "I'm going to bring an angel blade in case I decide to kill you."

Her guardian angel smirked and turned to Dean. "It's incredible how much you've influenced her temperament."

"I'll take that as a compliment," Dean said. At that moment, his phone rang, and he answered it with a curt, "Yeah?" After a moment, he just said, "Okay," and then hung up. "Sam and Cas are waiting for me. We're gonna bust this thing open." He turned to Sophie. "Be out of here in ten minutes, okay?"

"Sure thing," Sophie sighed. When Dean gave her a grateful smile and shut the door on his way out, she scowled. "Tyranny, that's what this is," she grumbled as she grabbed her laptop and a couple books, shoving them into her backpack before sliding on some shoes and throwing a sweater over her head.

Remy watched her in amusement. "They're just trying to do everything that's possible to not get you killed. Again."

"I know," Sophie said, "I just like complaining. It's cathartic. You ready?"

Remy assumed his most serious face. "The Winged Killjoy is always ready, Madam Winchester."

Sophie groaned, grabbing her backpack, her phone, and her keys. "I'm surrounded by actual lunatics. All of you. Lunatics."

Remy smirked. "If I'm the Winged Killjoy, you get to be my sidekick."

"I am nobody's sidekick, especially yours," Sophie told him, making her way out of her room and towards the garage, Remy at her heels.

"And as sidekick, you'd obviously need a nickname."

"Remy, don't—"

"The Ginger Pipsqueak?"

"I hate you," she said, unlocking her car and sliding into the driver's seat before tossing her backpack in the back.

"The Perpetual Damsel?" Remy asked as he got into the passenger seat, wearing a broad grin as he buckled his seat belt, something he did not out of safety concerns, but to make Sophie feel more at ease.

"I _really _hate you."

"The Magnet for Literally Every Evil Supernatural Force on Planet Earth?"

"I wish I'd shot you twice."

Remy laughed. "Point taken, Ace. Let's go write that essay."

* * *

Sam, Dean, and Cas all stared at the box.

It was just a box. Maybe three and a half feet wide and six inches tall. There were light Enochian and Greek inscriptions carved all around, along with some water rings on the side where it had served as a desktop.

Dean scratched his head. "Have we tried just getting hammer happy with it?"

Sam nodded. "No cigar."

He glanced at Cas. "Know what all these scratches mean?"

Cas nodded. "It's gibberish. Not even a riddle. Just…random words and phrases."

"Like what?" Sam asked.

Cas heaved a large breath. "Blood. Wheat. God. Victory. Massacre. Family. Life. Some of them are wards and sigils concealing the location and minimizing the power that the box exudes."

"That's…odd," Sam admitted.

"There's a spot for a key," Dean said, pointing out the keyhole that had allowed them to identify the box back in New Orleans.

Cas shook his head. "There is, and there's probably a key out there somewhere, but Dean, we're running out of time. Rapidly. Beelzebub has a plethora of celestial events he can choose from to finish the ritual at any time he pleases. All he needs is Sophie. So we just need to find a way around the key."

Dean smirked. "Well, that is our area of expertise, breaking into things."

Sam looked over at Cas. "What're you thinking? Will angel magic do the trick or are we gonna need more firepower?"

Cas kept his eyes glued on the box. "I don't know yet. I'll do some work on it. In the meantime, I need you two to get me every book you can get your hands on about ancient Greek language and rituals. I know everything there is to know about Enochian, but the Greek…I'm not as sure."

Dean released an annoyed sound. "Well, damn, Cas, if I had known all we'd be doing is research, I wouldn't have kicked Sophie out and made her do it instead."

Cas gave him a reproachful look. "Or maybe you give the girl who was recently kidnapped by dragons, among many other unfortunate incidents, a break from all of this Beelzebub business for a little while and let her do her actual homework instead of supernatural homework."

Dean glared at the angel. "I was just kidding, Cas. If there's anything I want, it's for Sophie to have some normal again. You know, we used to be pretty good at giving her that kind of life, but then she died, so it's been a little harder lately."

Cas looked at him carefully, and then just nodded. "If you two start gathering those research materials, I'll get started here."

Sam and Dean nodded. "Call in backup if you have to, Cas!" Dean called over his shoulder. "Seriously, the less time I have to spend with my nose in some old Greek book, the better!"

Cas just muttered something unintelligible under his breath, which Dean was pretty sure was an insult, and then Sam clapped him on the shoulder. "Nose to the grind, Dean, let's go crack open an ancient box that leads to God knows what."

* * *

"How's the coffee?"

"Good."

Pause.

"What's your essay on?"

"A book."

Pause.

"What book?"

Sophie snapped her head up to glare at Remy from across the table. "What did I say? You sit here _silently _while I work, okay?"

Remy lifted up his hands in surrender. "Fine, fine. I'm just saying, I know you, and you've never done well writing papers in coffee shops and under normal circumstances. You've always been more of a three A.M. stroke of inspiration in a dirty motel kind of writer."

At that, Sophie cracked a grin. "I'm a seventeen-year-old high school English student, Remy, not Ernest Hemingway."

He smirked back at her. "I don't know, judging by your recent history with cheap bottles of whiskey—"

"Low blow, Remy," she scolded, looking back at her laptop. But Remy was right. She never wrote essays like this, like a proper student, in a café with a cup of coffee and a focused environment. She usually splayed out on her bed, papers around her in a scattered blur, a coffee that had long since gone cold creating a ring on her bedside table. "I don't know, I just…I need to get all this done. I have so much work to do, and then also college apps, and that's all on top of Beelzebub on the eternal hunt for my damned soul, and…it's just a lot."

Remy exhaled, sitting back in his chair and crossing his arms. "There are a lot of people who would die before letting Beelzebub get you again, you know that right?"

"Yeah," Sophie said, "I know." She stared at her screen, which currently had half an outline typed out for her paper, and she groaned. "Okay, fine, you're right, I can't write this right now."

Remy leaned forward and clapped his hands together. "Alright, now we're talking! Sophie Winchester, what do you want to do with your day off?"

Sophie shrugged. "I don't know. I don't usually have too much free time away from the bunker."

Remy just stared at Sophie in exasperation. "For someone who has experienced so much and had so many adventures, you are the most boring girl I have ever met."

"Maybe I'm boring _because _I've experienced so much and had so many adventures. I'm burnt out."

"C'mon, Ace, there has to be _something _you've been wanting to do, something that I in all my angelic glory can make happen with my innate awe-inspiring power."

Sophie rolled her eyes. "Your humility knows no bounds."

"Sophie, come on, think."

Sophie took a sip of her coffee, thinking slowly, glancing around the café, at the mother in line with her twin sons and the tatted up barista taking the order of the businessman at the front of the line and the teenaged worker who had probably been working there for a month restocking mugs for sale on the wall. And then it hit her.

"Yeah," she said, and she couldn't help but grin a little. "Yeah, I can think of something."

* * *

"If this is your idea of a wild day away from the parental unit, then Sophie, I really need to inculcate your sorely lacking spirit of youthful rebellion."

Sophie glared at Remy in disbelief. "I got a _tattoo_, Remy, without my dad or Sam's approval! Even in regular human terms that's literally the epitome of youthful rebellion!"

"It's an anti-possession tattoo exactly matching the one they let you get the last time," Remy said. "It's an exact copy of what they _already _gave you permission to get."

"Except _that_ tattoo got utterly destroyed by a Big Easy Dragon, and this time, it's in a more provocative area," Sophie said matter-of-factly.

"It's on the opposite shoulder blade."

"If you haven't noticed that my left shoulder blade is _much _sexier than my right shoulder blade, you must be blind," Sophie laughed with a small twinkle in her eye that made it impossible for Remy to not grin back at her.

"Well, Ace, I guess it's a start," he laughed, sitting behind the wheel of her car. He checked the time. "Okay, well, it's only two in the afternoon, and you still haven't gotten the green light from Dean to go back to the bunker. So what do you want to do?"

Sophie shrugged. "I don't know. I ran out of all my rebellious ideas."

"It was one idea. And it was a tattoo. _That you've already gotten before_."

"That took a lot of rebellious energy."

"Two weeks ago you were getting arrested for underage drinking."

"What can I say, I'm a new woman."

Remy rolled his eyes. "Well, c'mon Ace, what's it gonna be?"

Sophie sighed, leaning forward in her seat to avoid pressing her newly tatted back against the seat. When Remy saw her gesture, he placed two fingers on her shoulder and she immediately felt the raw, burning sensation on her back disappear. She turned around in surprise, trying to see her tattoo but failing to. "You expedited the healing?" she asked.

Remy snorted. "Fancy word, expedite."

"Did you?"

"Of course I did," Remy said. "Consider it one of the very few perks of being wrapped up in the affairs of angels and demons."

She stretched out, testing her newly healed back. "Well, thanks."

"So, now that you aren't hindered by the pain of the world's tiniest tattoo, what now?"

Sophie sighed. "I want to go for a run."

Remy snorted. "Well, you're not really dressed for a run," he said, gesturing towards her jeans, sneakers, tank top, and the sweater Sophie was now pulling back over her healed skin.

"I know," she grumbled. "I just want to be outside."

"It's forty-seven degrees."

"As you pointed out, I'm dressed for chilly weather."

Remy shrugged. "As you wish," he allowed.

Fifteen minutes later, they pulled up a slightly familiar dirt road into a thicket of trees, and when Sophie took a closer look up the path she realized where they were. "Your cabin?" she asked.

"Just for a moment. Gotta check up on something," he said, and as they made their way farther up the path Sophie realized that she'd never actually been here before, only in the vision Beelzebub had sent her just hours before he'd ran a sword through her abdomen. But she still could recognize it.

"You were tortured here," she said softly.

Remy gave her a sideways glance. "Yeah," he exhaled, making eye contact with her. "But it was a while ago, Soph, I'm good now."

Sophie just held his gaze for a little longer, feeling the slightest of butterflies in her stomach. She just slid out of the car, waiting for Remy to follow suit behind her. "Now what?"

"We go inside," Remy said. "And I check up on Ariel, and then we can go—"

"Wait, Ariel's here?" Sophie cut in, stopping in her tracks. "At this cabin?"

Remy nodded.

"Has she been living with you this whole time?"

"Some of it," Remy said. "She just gets…lonely. She's getting better though. She's adjusted to the wingless life pretty well. She just…misses her old life from time to time, and I'm a decent distraction."

"Oh," Sophie said, looking up at the door. "Good. I'm…glad she's at least doing somewhat okay." She paused. "Should I…should I wait out here, or…?"

"No, don't be ridiculous, Ace, come in. Ariel's actually gonna leave soon, and I'm sure she'd like to say hey before she heads out."

"You sure?"

Remy rolled his eyes. "Of course I'm sure, now come on."

"Okay then."

They walked up to the front door of the cabin, Remy opening the door and holding it open for Sophie. She stepped through and was immediately greeted by an earthy, woodsy smell that generally seemed to come with cabins. The sound of a TV flitted through and greeted Sophie's ears, and she turned to the sound.

"Is that…_Friends_?"

A little blonde head peeked out from underneath a pile of blankets on Remy's small living room couch. "Sophie!" a small, high-pitched voice said. The blankets were pushed off, and up sat a teenage girl, maybe fourteen or fifteen, wearing a broad smile. She worse a pink long sleeved shirt and yoga pants, and her hair was tied into a little bun on the top of her head. "Sophie Winchester, hi, I'm Ariel! I don't think we've ever formally met, but I've heard so much about you!"

Sophie, surprised, just gave a little grin. "Um, hi. I've, uh, heard a lot about you, too."

"Don't worry about her lack of communication skills, Ari, it's just part of her genetics," Remy said, tossing his jacket on the kitchen counter and disappearing into his room.

The TV was still whirring away, and Ariel quickly lifted the remote control and paused it. "Sorry," she said quickly, "human television has quickly become my biggest weakness."

Sophie smiled. "I'm sure the producers of _Friends _would be thrilled to know their demographic has expanded to include celestial beings."

Ariel grinned. "I had a feeling you and I could get along swimmingly. I mean, at the very least, we both love Remy."

Sophie's mouth opened slightly. "Um, I mean, yeah, I don't hate him if that's what you—"

The small angel laughed. "I forgot that humans have such sensitive connotations of the word _love_. We both care about him, we can agree on that, yeah?"

Sophie grinned. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess we can."

Ariel got up from the couch, and Sophie was thrown off by the fact that this teenager, who at fourteen or fifteen was already prettier than Sophie felt she would ever be, wasn't even actually a teenager, but an angel. How old was she even? What did she look like without the human shell she wore?

Or maybe these questions weren't even ones she was thinking about Ariel, but about another angel she spent a whole lot of time with.

She shook the thought out of her head just in time for Ariel to ask her a question. "So what brings you around here?"

"My dad kicked me out of the bunker so he could work on something without worrying about me being nearby to screw things up," Sophie said, only half-jokingly. "So my wagon's hitched to Remy's until I get the all clear from back home."

Ariel smiled. "I'm in a similar situation."

Sophie frowned. "Heaven kicked you out?"

"Nah," Ariel said. "Between you and me, they love me up there. It's just…hard, being back there. Being different. I'm hiding with Remy until I can face my fate."

Sophie sighed. "I don't blame you." She paused for a moment. "I…I'm so sorry, Ariel, about…everything that happened."

The young angel gave a wistful grin. "Yeah, well, I could say the same to you."

Before Sophie could respond, Remy emerged from his room, wearing jeans, a Henley, and boots that made Sophie seriously wonder if he'd been raiding her father's closet. There was a hoodie in his hands, one too big for Sophie. "Alright, Ace," he said, tossing the hoodie to her. "The temperature just dropped three point two degrees and that thin sweater you're wearing has holes in it. Put this on."

"Okay, _Mom_," Sophie said, but not arguing. Remy's sweater was warm, and had a Lebanon Central insignia on the back. She slid it on over her sweater. "So now do I finally get my stroll through the great outdoors?"

Remy smirked. "Yeah, yeah, c'mon." He looked over at Ariel, who had already sank back onto the couch and resumed the TV show. "You good, Ari?"

"Shhhh, Ross and Rachel are fighting about whether or not they were on a break."

Sophie grinned, and Remy just shrugged, leading Sophie to the door. "After you," he said.

Thirty seconds later, they were outside, walking towards the woods.

**Hi friends! Exciting stuff was gonna happen in this chapter, but it started to get too long, so I'm splitting it into two parts! Stay tuned for next Saturday, it's gonna be good (I hope).**

**Thanks for your patience with me! These path few months have been filled with classes, finals, and as of two days ago, wisdom teeth surgery, so writing has been hard. But summer is finally, finally upon us, so expect more frequent updates!**

**See ya Saturday! Good stuff awaits! ~ Lacey :)**


	97. Chapter 97: The Day Off (Part Two)

_Chapter 97: The Day Off (Part Two)_

As Sophie and Remy walked between trees and stepped over roots, Sophie was acutely aware of the fact that this was the first time she and Remy were doing something together that hadn't been precipitated by some crisis that drew them together, or that hadn't been facilitated by a magical guardian angel bond. They were just…two people. Hanging out together. Freely.

Or as freely as Sophie ever hung out with her personal celestial bodyguard.

"Where are we going?" she asked after a while of letting Remy lead her through the woods.

"A place."

"Oh, great, I've always wanted to go there."

"Just wait, it'll be worth it."

Sophie was quiet for a moment. "Hey Remy?"

"Yeah?"

"How old are you?"

Remy paused as he ducked under a branch, looking back at her. "Old," he admitted, before continuing onward through the woods. "Young by angel standards, but…old."

Sophie followed quietly, trying to sift through the thoughts running through her brain. She could hardly deny a natural attraction to Remy, one that had been building for a long time now. But she also couldn't deny the strangeness and wrongness that accompanied being a human teenager that had feelings for an angel.

Feeling frustrated, Sophie piped up again. "Your body," she said.

"I know, I know, I've skipped leg day a few times, sue me—"

"Whose was it?" she cut him off. "Who…who are you… occupying?"

Remy gave her a quick glance backwards. "Why are you asking?"

Because she wanted to know if they were sick, these feelings she had for him. Because she wanted him to scare her out of feeling anything for him. "Because I just was wondering. If…if he had a family, or whatever."

Remy heaved a big breath. "Well…it's complicated."

"How?"

Remy kept going a few more steps. "Guardian angels are different from regular angels," he said. "We all have claims to Heaven, and we were all created to serve the big guy upstairs, if he ever decides to show his face…but we're still different. Not quite the same species, I guess you could say. Regular angels, they're pure spirit. Guardians, though, they need bodies to even come into existence."

"So what does that mean?" Sophie asked.

Remy heaved a big breath. "It means I was born into the world by a real, human couple. I lived my first lifetime as a human, in this body. A human, with a human family, with no knowledge of the fact that I was actually an angel."

Sophie was so stunned she forgot to swipe a branch out of the way, and it hit her straight in the face. When she recovered, she spluttered. "You were…human?"

"Yes and no," Remy said slowly. "I was an angel. I've always been an angel. I just…didn't know I was an angel for the first eighteen years of my life. I thought I was a boy, with parents, and sisters and brothers and friends. Because that's how I was born. That's how all guardian angels are born. Into life, with a body, and with a human experience."

"That's…insane," Sophie said. "How did I not know this?"

"You never asked."

Sophie was quiet for a moment. "So...how do guardian angels find out they aren't human?"

"We die," he replied shortly. "Or at least, we think we die. We sort of get a one way ticket to Heaven, where an angel fills us in on the fact that, surprise, we actually aren't dead and are immortal angels destined to guard God's creations until the end of time. And then they fix us back up with our bodies and send us back to earth so we can start protecting our first charge."

"So your body…it never belonged to anyone but you?"

Remy shrugged. "I guess. I mean, I can still leave it whenever I need to. It's still a vessel, hollowed out for me before I was created so that I could take human form on earth. It's still unnecessary to my survival. But I guess, yeah, it's mine. Perhaps the only perk of being a guardian over being any regular angel is that we don't have to get permission to enter our true vessel, because it's created for us. Like a guardian angel signing bonus."

"But you still had to ask my permission to use me as your vessel so that you could fix my cloak that one time," Sophie pointed out in confusion.

"Well yeah, we have to get permission to use anybody else's body," Remy said matter-of-factly. "Just not our own."

Sophie was quiet as they kept walking, absorbing all this information. Did this mean anything different? She supposed it was comforting to know that the body she was attracted to was actually Remy and not some stranger that Remy occupied who had had his own life, but even then, it wasn't quite right. He was still so old. So different. So…incompatible.

She just needed to stop thinking about it. She needed to give it up.

"Are we almost there?" she asked.

"Two minutes," he said. "You wanted to enjoy the great outdoors, and dammit, I'm gonna give you the great outdoors."

Sophie laughed. "Man on a mission." She paused for a moment to take a breath, and then said, "So seriously, nobody else has ever lived in your body?"

"Why are you so hung up on this?"

"It's just…weird! And cool! And… I don't know, I just want to know more." _About you._

Remy smirked. "Well, yeah. This meatsuit is mine and mine alone."

"Do you…do you remember your human life?"

Remy sunk into silence for a long moment, and Sophie wondered if he had just chosen to ignore her question. Then he just said, "Yeah."

She waited for him to elaborate, but he didn't. Instead, they just kept walking. And then, after a minute, Remy stopped in front of a dense thicket of branches. "Alright, Ace. We're here."

And then he pushed through the dangling leaves and into a clearing, and when Sophie followed him through, she smiled.

It was a beautiful, small little clearing in the woods. There was a tiny little brook that ran into a small pond surrounded by rocks and flowers, and a clear stretch of grass covered in little yellow flowers. The trees that surrounded the clearing towered high above them, creating a small dome of leaves through which sunlight flittered down to the earth in speckled patches of brightness.

It was small, and simple, and beautiful, and Sophie had forgotten that such places existed in the world.

"How'd you find this?" she asked, and she realized her voice had gotten softer, as if she were in a library. As if her regular voice would disturb the peace.

Remy shrugged. "I don't sleep, really. So I explore. I was with Ariel when I found this place. She loves it, comes here almost every day, especially since she lost her wings."

"I can see why. It's probably ideal for some R&amp;R." She turned to look at Remy, who was standing at the edge of the clearing, watching her closely. She looked at him for a long time, trying to figure out what else to say to him.

But he beat her to it. "We probably shouldn't stay long," he said. "Sam and Dean will want you back soon."

She waved away his concern. "They kicked me out, they can deal if I break my nonexistent curfew."

"I'm surprised that they haven't given you one," Remy said, walking past her and standing against a tall, thick tree, leaning back on it as if he didn't have a single care in the world.

For some reason, that annoyed Sophie. "Why do you say that?"

"I was just saying that your recent actions haven't exactly labeled you as ultra-trustworthy."

"I know," she snapped defensively. "I'm in the process of gaining that trust back, actually."

Remy looked up, and his eyes met hers. "I've been meaning to talk to you about that, actually," he said, and she could've sworn she saw his eyes go from bright green to dark in just a few moments. "I've been meaning to apologize."

That hadn't been quite what she was expecting. "For what?"

"For not knowing you were in trouble that night when you went to the bar," he said. "For not being there to keep you from going to that son of a bitch's apartment, for not killing him when Dean backed off."

Sophie grinned, taking a couple steps towards Remy, arms folded across her chest. "Jealous?"

Remy made a disgusted face. "Don't joke about it, Soph, any old creep can take advantage of a sad, hurt girl at a bar. I'm not jealous of the guy, I wanted his soul bookmarked for Hell."

Sophie's grin fell. "I'm only joking about it because I don't want to think about it anymore, and people keep bringing it up as if it needs to be rehashed every twenty-four hours!"

In a rare moment of candor, Remy looked mildly ashamed. "I'm sorry."

Sophie just shook her head. "I don't accept your apology, not for this one. I went with Wes, and while he may have been looking to take advantage of me, I knew it, and I went with him anyway. Nothing happened, and even if it had, it would've been on me. It's time I started being held a little accountable and you stopped considering every loss for me a loss for you."

"I'm still your guardian," Remy said, looking across at the pond, which was rippling after a twig from a tree fell into it.

Sophie shrugged. "I mean, like you always said. You can only protect me as far as I let you. If I do something stupid, that's on me. I'm not a toddler, I can live my life and deal with the consequences."

Remy smirked. "Yeah, I guess you're a little more mature than when we first met."

"Hell does that to a gal."

"It's not just Hell," Remy said truthfully. "It's just…you. You're different from the girl you were back then. It's natural, changing like that, becoming more adult. But for you it's just…well, I don't know, it suits you."

Sophie didn't realize that she was standing only a foot in front of him until she was suddenly aware that she could see the different flecks of green in his eyes, the brighter flecks and the darker, browner flecks, and then the small speckles of gold that shined in the leaf-broken sunlight of the little clearing. "Hey Remy?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't take this the wrong way…but you have beautiful eyes."

Was she closer to him now? She couldn't tell. She was a little dizzy.

"Ace?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't take this the wrong way…but you're just…," he hesitated, and trees around them seemed to lock them together, before he said, "you're beautiful."

But there was no other way Sophie could take that. She stared at him, eyes soft and curious, and slowly, as if he were a scared animal that might run away at sudden movement, she brought her hand up to his face, placing it on his cheek, wanting to convey to him that whether or not he wanted to acknowledge it, she had to show him she cared.

His eyes closed the moment her hand touched his face, shortly, just for a moment, but it took Sophie's breath away, how just her fingers on his cheek could change him.

But when they opened again, there was a warmth in his eyes she'd never seen before. His eyes, green-grey as always, now seemed backlit, shining forth with something she'd never seen before, a sort of agency she'd never experienced from him. And she found herself feeling like she was at the top of the roller coaster, with the first fall fast approaching, and not knowing what to do about it.

His hands found hers and pulled her slowly towards him, until they were just inches away. His head leaned down towards her, and she was overwhelmed by his closeness, and his mouth hovered over hers, the air nearly trembling with so much confusion and indecision that if the feelings had been heat, they would have both disintegrated into ashes.

And then months and months of unspoken feelings and forced self-control spilled over, and her mouth was on his – or maybe his was on hers, she couldn't recall who had caved in first – and they were kissing, slowly, cautiously, like they were navigating a minefield that would blow either of them up at any moment.

And maybe they were. Somewhere in the back of Sophie's rational mind, she knew that in a split second they'd just changed everything. It was one thing to joke about their feelings, to tease them, to hint at the fact that both of them wished that it could be more in some alternate universe. It was something else entirely to act upon it, to breach that boundary, to experiment with each other in a new, utterly foreign way.

Remy's every action was glacial. He kissed her in slow motion, testing every centimeter before committing to it, driving Sophie crazier and crazier. But she was doing the same, taking every individual moment to feel, to remember, because she was sure that once they broke apart Remy would dissolve into a puddle of remorse and regret and command that they never, ever should have done what they were doing, and she just couldn't bear that, so she decide to pretend it would never happen.

Remy's hands had found their way to her hair, gliding through her curls slowly and gripping her ever so more tightly. Her hands had wound around his waist, and everything was slow, too slow, _torturous_—

And then, as if he'd made a decision halfway through knotting his fingers through her hair, the switch flipped, and he was kissing her deeply, madly. Sophie had no words to describe the change of pace; like someone had pushed fast forward on her entire being and now everything was rushing towards her at indeterminable speeds. Remy was everywhere, occupying every speck of her field of perception. She stayed in step with him, kissing him back, grabbing onto his shirt just in case she lost the ability to control her legs. She frantically tried to remember how to breathe and she was certain she'd run out of oxygen when Remy suddenly turned her, and then her back was against the tree and his lips were at her jaw.

Seeing stars and not wanting to waste a single moment of this, not sure when either one of them would snap back to their senses and push the other away, she took his face in her hands and pulled his lips back to hers, kissing him and thinking that if light had a taste, that's what his would be.

She wasn't sure if and when they would have ever stopped if her phone hadn't started ringing.

She tried to ignore it at first. She was so caught up in Remy that she was deaf to the rest of the world. But then it kept ringing and vibrating, and Remy was the first to stop, to prop himself up by resting a hand on the tree behind Sophie, his forehead against hers and his lips just a millimeter separated from her own. "You should get that," he whispered.

She just stared into his eyes, trying to read them, terrified about what they'd say, but she couldn't tell. The phone started ringing for the third time, and Sophie finally managed to get enough control of her body to reach down and grab it from her pocket. When she pulled it out and saw it was her dad, her cheeks flamed up.

Remy stepped back from her, looking away as she tried to steady her breathing, and once it was slightly under control, she answered. "Hey, Dad."

"Jesus Christ, Sophie, why'd it take you three tries to answer?" Dean's voice came through the phone.

"Sorry," she said quickly. "I forgot to turn on the volume."

"What's going on, you sound weird."

"Nothing, just…stressed about my essay, that's all," she said. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Remy walk across the clearing and go stand by the pond, staring down at the water. She didn't like contemplative Remy. It freaked her out. "How's the box?"

"We got it," Dean said triumphantly. "It's…well, it's pretty damn epic, to be honest. Why don't you head on home and come see."

"Yeah sure," she said. "Be back soon."

"Sam's getting food now, so hurry."

"On my way."

She hung up, tucking the phone back into her pocket and looking up to see Remy had turned back from the water and was watching her. "That was, uh, my dad," she said after a moment.

When she saw the crack of that familiar grin, she felt relief wash over her. Grins were good signs. It meant, at the very least, he wasn't resenting her. "Yeah," he said, followed by a low chuckle. "I got that."

"He, uh, wants us to come back. They busted the box open, I think. And Sam's getting food, so it should be a party probably—"

"You're rambling," he noted, taking a few steps closer to her, and with each step her heart raced faster. "It's endearing."

_Calling me endearing is endearing. _But Sophie could never say that. So instead, she just took a step back. "We should go," she said shortly.

And without looking to see if he was following, but knowing he was, she turned and walked away.

* * *

The ride back to the bunker wasn't long in actuality, but to Sophie, it felt like forever.

She drove with Taylor Swift blasting so loudly the words weren't even all that discernable. Remy didn't push her. She knew he knew she didn't know how to act, and she was pretty sure he didn't know either. Remy talked a big game, as he was just shy of Dean in terms of inflated egos, but this… kissing his charge, blurring the lines between angels and humans…this was uncharted territory.

And he seemed just as content as Sophie to pretend, for the time being at least, that the power of loud music was enough to drown out their current predicament.

When she pulled into the garage under the bunker and turned off the car, the music cut, and suddenly Remy and Sophie were left in pounding silence.

Sophie was the first to speak. "My dad can't know."

She didn't know if Remy would be annoyed, or if he would agree, or if he would embark upon a long-winded explanation about why they should never ever do what they had done in the woods ever again.

Instead, she heard his soft chuckle, the kind he did with mostly his breath and not his voice. "You probably say that to all the guys."

Sophie gave him a look. "There is no 'all the guys' and you know it."

"Do I?" Remy scoffed. "Clearly you've been in an alcohol-induced blindness this past semester, because every boy in school has been drooling over you and your new devil-may-care hot vibe. They all love drunk and dangerous Sophie."

Sophie couldn't help it. She laughed in his face. "First of all, _hot vibe_? What is this, the '70s? Secondly, that's all crap, I could barely dress myself the last few weeks, there was definitely nobody that thought I looked _better _that way. And even if they did, I'm back on the straight and narrow, so that's all over now."

"Whatever you say, Ace," Remy exhaled.

"The point," Sophie said, "is that if my dad thinks that anything…_anything_…has crossed over the line of us just joking about…whatever this is…he's gonna kill you."

Remy smirked. "And you."

"Exactly. So let's just…act natural, okay?"

"Hey, I'm an angel of the Lord with years of practice. _You're _the one that should worry about acting natural."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Sophie snapped.

"It means you've been blushing since you kissed me, Ace."

Sophie's mouth dropped open. "No way, _you _kissed _me_!"

Remy shrugged. "Either way, you still look like you spent one too many hours in the sun."

Sophie just glared at him, got out of her car, and slammed the door shut. He slid out as well, closing the door more gently than she had. "I'm serious, Eremiel. Not a word," she said under her breath, and then she took a deep breath to calm herself down and made her way inside.

She didn't see Remy following her and holding in his laughter.

As she made her way into the main room of the bunker, she tossed her keys onto the table. "Dad? Sam? I'm home!"

Voices flitted towards her from the hall, and she waited as they got clearer and clearer until finally, she saw Sam round the corner, Dean and Cas in tow.

"Cas!" she exclaimed, smiling broadly. When the angel looked up and saw her, he grinned.

"Sophie, I'm so happy to see how well you're doing," he said contritely.

"I'm just happy to see you," she said, frowning. "You never come around anymore. We still need to watch _Dirty Dancing_!"

"Dirty dancing? Dean, you haven't been letting her watch pornographic videos, have you?"

Sophie laughed. "No Cas, it's a totally not X-rated movie, I promise. It's a classic."

"Don't do it, Cas," Dean warned. "She'll go all crazy teenage fangirl on you."

"You're the one who always says Swayze gets a pass!" Sophie exclaimed.

"Sophie," Cas said before Dean could reply, "I would be honored to watch this movie with you."

Sophie stuck her tongue out at Dean in victory, and he lifted his hands up in surrender. "Your funeral, buddy," he told Cas. He looked over at Remy. "Boring day with the bookworm?"

"Incredibly boring," Remy said with a serious face.

Sophie felt the blood rise in her cheeks.

It didn't go unnoticed. "Soph?" Sam asked, and she looked up to see him looking at her cautiously. "Everything alright?"

"Why wouldn't it be?" she asked quickly. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Remy roll his own. He'd been right. She couldn't hide the truth to save her life.

"Sophie," Dean said, and she could hear the warning tone in his voice. "Anything you wanna share with us?"

She looked up slowly and made eye contact with him, and even though she tried her best, her body betrayed her and her blush deepened. "No."

Now Dean was interested. "Sophie."

"Dad, chill," she said. "Didn't you call me back to talk about the box?"

Dean turned to Sam. "Did she just tell me to chill?"

Sam shot Sophie an apologetic glance. "You shouldn't have told him to chill."

"I'm as chill as they freaking come, sweetheart," Dean continued, taking a couple steps toward Sophie. She looked down as he got within three feet of her, and even though she wasn't looking at him, she could just picture her dad, standing there with arms crossed and eyes narrowed. "So why don't we try it again and you tell me what you're not telling me."

Sophie stood there silently. No way she could tell him. No way she could talk to Dean about _any _of her guy troubles, much less anything involving Remy, which would send him on a murderous rampage. "Um…."

"Just tell them, Ace," Remy said.

She looked at him like he was insane. "What?"

"Fine, you won't, I will, this is ridiculous," Remy said. He took a deep breath, as if it were difficult for him to just come out and say it. And then, "Sophie got a tattoo."

The room was silent. Sam looked apprehensive, Cas looked clueless, Remy looked like he'd just pulled off a heist, and Dean looked—

"You did WHAT?!"

* * *

Later that night, after Sophie and Remy, with the help of an always rational Sam, had talked Dean down from his burst of rage, Sophie and Cas were sitting in the war room watching _Dirty Dancing _and Sam and Dean sat in the kitchen, talking under their breaths about strategy.

"Hey, Sam, I've been thinking," Dean said. "We're idiots if we don't think Beelzebub and his buddies know exactly where we are right now. I mean, he _killed_ Sophie not twenty minutes from here."

"I've thought about it, too," Sam admitted. "He's gotta know where the bunker is, where her school is."

"Exactly," Dean said gruffly, taking a drink from his beer. "Maybe…maybe we should leave. Find one of Bobby's old cabins, set up shop away from here. I mean I'm as glad as anyone that she's doing better and trying in school again, but…none of that will be worth it if she's dead."

Sam shook his head. "He may know where we are, but the bunker's the most fortified place in America, and Sophie's school has the protection of a battalion of angels. She's going to be in danger like this wherever she goes. There's no point wasting time moving her somewhere new with less fortification. This isn't gonna stop until Beelzebub's dead."

Before Dean could respond, Sophie and Cas emerged from the war room, bickering about the movie.

"Cas, c'mon, how do you _not _think that dance move is the most romantic thing in the world?"

"Because I've been alive for millennia, Sophie. I've witnessed human romance that has stunned the heavens themselves. That dance move is nothing."

"You angels just suck all the fun out of everything, don't you," Sophie sighed, and as they entered the room, she saw Sam and Dean and grinned. "Hey, I didn't know you two were still up."

"Since when have we ever gone to bed before you?" Dean asked her shortly.

"Don't mind him, he's still angry about the tattoo thing," Sam told her, giving her a grin as if his approval of her new tattoo was a secret just between the two of them.

"Yeah, sorry I don't want my seventeen-year-old kid going off and getting inked up without me knowing. That makes me _such _a terrible parent," Dean snapped, annoyed.

"We talked about this, Dad," Sophie said. "It's the same tattoo I had before. Literally the exact same. And a girl did it this time, so you can't be annoyed about me pulling up my shirt in front of some random guy."

"But Remy was there," he pointed out.

Sophie was pretty sure she was able to calm herself enough to not blush too much at that, but she wasn't sure how successful she was. "Dad, Remy's an angel," she said carefully. "A little bit of skin exposure isn't exactly the neatest thing since sliced bread for him."

"Whatever you say," Dean said, unconvinced.

"Besides, now I'm protected from demon possession. This is a good thing," Sophie said.

"Yeah, yeah," Dean said, finishing off his beer. "Okay, it's one in the morning and you, my friend, have school tomorrow."

"And a test, if I remember right," Sam added. "You ready for it?"

Sophie nodded. "Very." She turned to look at Cas. "Thanks for hanging out with me. I miss our movie nights."

"Me too, little lion." Then Cas eyed her up and down. "Or maybe not so little lion. You're two point seven inches taller than when we first met."

She grinned. "Well…I'm almost eighteen."

"Jesus Christ," Dean groaned. "I'm the father of an almost adult."

"Yeah, that means soon I don't need to fake your permission to get a tattoo, I can just do it on my own," Sophie teased.

"It's cute that you think that," Dean told her plainly.

Sophie shrugged. "On that note, I'm going to bed. Tomorrow, after I kick my test in the ass, you've gotta show me what you found in the box, okay?"

She gave Cas a quick hug, and then disappeared down the hall.

Dean looked over at Sam. "We do need to figure out what we're gonna do next, with Beelzebub. Now that we've got something to face him with."

Sam nodded. "Yeah. But…tomorrow. Tonight let's just get some sleep."

Dean shrugged. "Fine by me. Cas, can you keep the weapon safe until we need it?"

Cas nodded. "Bring it to me and I'll make sure it stays somewhere that no one can reach."

Sam glanced at Dean and silently stood, disappearing into another room. Dean and Cas remained alone in the room, staring off into separate corners.

"So you didn't like the movie?" Dean asked after a moment, to fill the silence.

"It wasn't my favorite," Cas admitted.

Dean made a scoffing sound of disbelief, to which Cas gave a questioning glance. Before Dean could address it, though, Sam returned, a long, blanket-coated object in his hands. "It's crazy, I can literally feel how powerful this thing is an I'm not even touching it directly."

"It's the twin blade of _Synkomidí̱, _the weapon Beelzebub used to kill Sophie and reap her soul," Cas said in a serious tone._ "_Its name is _Thetós. _And—"

Dean cut him off. "Cas, we really don't need an etymology lesson right now, just keep the damn thing safe, okay?"

Cas nodded. "I can do that." He took the blade from Sam, weighed it in his grasp, and then gave a rare Castiel grin. "This can do it," he said after a moment. "This can kill Beelzebub."

"Bout time we caught a break," Dean grumbled, but then he gave a little half grin of relief. Hearing Cas say the blade might be able to do the trick...it was comforting. "Thanks, Cas."

"Of course." Cas was about to whisk himself away when he seemed to recall a spare thought, before saying, "I also think you should know that Sophie and Remy kissed each other today. Just so you have a heads up."

Without another word, he was gone, leaving the two Winchesters stunned.

There was a long stretch of silence, in which Sam looked over at Dean to see what he might be thinking. As the shock faded slightly from Dean's face, his eyes narrowed, and he was eerily quiet for a few long moments, before—

"SOPHIE WINCHESTER!"

**A long time coming! **

**I've been holding off on pulling this trigger, but you all know that regardless of your opinions on Remy and Sophie, this was gonna happen at some point. I understand the people who don't love the idea of them together – angels and humans romantically involved is kinda Twilight-creepy, I get that (it's why I'm pretty vehemently anti-Destiel…sorry, shippers). But, hey, this is Supernatural, and to be honest, this moment had to happen. So it did. And here it is.**

**ALSO, I have room for ONE MORE non-Beelzebub sub-storyline (about a chapter's worth) in between now and the end of the story. It can be filled with a hunt, an activity that Sam, Dean, and Sophie do, a day trip, something to do with Sophie's school, etc…it can be anything, and while I've tinkered with some ideas, I figured I'd ask you guys if you had anything you've been dying to see happen in this story. I obviously can't fufill every request, but ideas are most welcome!**

**As always, thanks for reading. See ya next time! ~ Lacey :)**


	98. Chapter 98: Graceless

_Chapter 98: Graceless_

When Sophie walked into her room, she was overwhelmed with a feeling of exhaustion. It had been a long, confusing, emotional, strange day. She'd studied, gotten a tattoo, kissed her guardian angel, and lied to her family about it. She didn't want to deal with any of her issues anymore.

Honestly, she just wanted to sleep.

But after she emerged from her closet in an oversized T-shirt she'd stolen from Sam and a pair of running shorts she sometimes wore to bed because they had a hole in them, she saw Remy sitting on her bed, and she immediately sighed, a little overdramatically to try and cover up the fact that her heart had started beating faster at the sight of him.

"Just can't stay away, can you?" she teased him.

"I can," he said. "I've just decided I don't want to."

Sophie frowned. "I really don't think you should be in my room right now, Remy."

"And yet, here I am," he said, smirking.

She gave him a look. "What do you want?"

Remy lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender. "I just want to talk to you. I know what'll happen if we don't – things will get progressively more and more tense, and then we'll stop talking, and then we'll grow to resent each other…and I'm not willing to have that happen. Not with you."

She looked at him closely, trying to read him. "I don't want that to happen either," she said. "But—"

"SOPHIE WINCHESTER!"

Sophie glanced at her door and then back at Remy. "That's weird," she said. "He sounds…actually angry."

"Maybe it's residual anger from the tattoo and he needs one more good yell before he can go to sleep," Remy offered.

"I don't know, there's angry Dean and then there's…_angry _Dean, and this sounds like—"

Without warning, the door to her room burst open, and Dean strode in, a surprisingly similarly upset Sam walking in behind him. "Sophie, we need to have a—_what the hell is he doing in your bed_?"

Remy, sensing that Dean was not to be trifled with at this moment, quickly stood up. Upon looking at her dad's face and seeing the murderous look he was giving Remy, she said, "Dad, what's going on here?"

"I could ask you the same thing," he snapped, walking over, grabbing Remy by the collar, and shoving him away from Sophie, into the opposite corner of the room. His forcefulness was met with little resistance, both from Remy himself and, to Sophie's surprise, Sam. Sam was usually the one who held Dean back from being overly aggressive. But right now, he was just allowing it to happen.

"I don't understand—," Sophie started.

"Soph," Sam said in a relatively neutral tone, which unsettled Sophie—usually, when Sam was trying to retroactively atone for Dean's overdone outbursts, he sounded placating and comforting, not so…toneless. "Cas just told us something that concerns us."

Sophie was confused—or perhaps just in denial—but Remy's face immediately dropped. "Oh, crap, I forgot," he mumbled to himself.

Sophie gave him a look, and then back at Sam and Dean. "What—?"

"You two did something that you shouldn't have done today, didn't you?" Sam accused. Even though Sophie could tell he was upset, he was still calm, and it was freaking her out.

She flushed red. "We talked about this, I'm sorry I didn't ask for the tattoo, I just thought—"

"Cut the crap, Soph!" Dean exclaimed. "We know you two kissed!"

For some reason, hearing her dad say it made her cringe. Just hearing her dad say the word _kiss _made her feel nauseous.

But she was unable to deny it, now that they knew. She looked back at him, feeling her blush fading away now that the truth was out in the open. "How…."

"I forgot," Remy spoke up, earning him evil glares from both Sam and Dean. "Guardian angels and their charges…I mean, romance between humans and angels is always forbidden, but between guardian angels and their charges…well, it would definitely send up a red flag to Heaven. Castiel must've ratted you out."

"You're damn right!" Dean exclaimed. He glared at Remy. "I want you to know that if you didn't have the power to keep her safe, I would kill you on the spot."

Something in his voice made Sophie think he wasn't kidding. "Dad, c'mon, you're being a little ridiculous, it was just a kiss."

"I don't give a damn," Dean snapped, and then he focused his glare on Remy. "You're God knows how old, and you're supposed to protect her, not shove your tongue down her throat."

"I think I'm capable of doing both," Remy replied smoothly.

Sam had to physically hold Dean back while Sophie snapped, "Remy, you really think now is the time?"

"Sorry, inappropriate humor is my default," he said, not looking sorry in the slightest.

Sophie looked over at Sam, who was mumbling something to Dean in an effort to calm him down. "Sam, you don't look happy either," she said in surprise.

"Yeah, Soph, I'm not," Sam said after a moment. "Dean's right, he's old, he's an _angel_. You're seventeen."

She knew she shouldn't get defensive, but she couldn't help it. "So? Dad slept with Anna! She was an angel. And you've slept with a _demon_. Remy isn't nearly _half_ as bad as either of those, and it was _just a kiss_."

"Sleeping with Ruby was a mistake," Sam said curtly. "Maybe the biggest mistake of my life. And maybe Anna wasn't Dean's best decision, but she was a human then."

"So? She was still eons old! Remy's a young angel. And his body is his own, it's not just some random vessel he picked up over the years. Guardians get their own when they're created."

"Really?" Sam said, momentarily more interested in this piece of information than anything else. "I've never seen that in the lore, is it—"

"It doesn't matter! God, Sam, you're such a nerd, keep your head in the game," Dean cut him off roughly. "Sophie, I don't give a damn if he's your age or a million years older than you. He's not human. So whatever the hell you guys were thinking of starting here, shut it down. Now. End of discussion."

"Dad—"

"Get out," he snapped at Remy. The angel didn't move, looking at Sophie to see what she was thinking. But Sophie wasn't looking at him. She was just glaring at her dad. "I swear to God, you son of a bitch, if you don't leave this damn _country _I'm gonna shove an angel blade so far up your—"

With a rustling of wings, he was gone.

Now that Remy was gone, Sophie was the center of Dean's rage. "Did _he_ kiss _you_ or was it the other way around?" he asked angrily.

Sophie cleared her throat. "That's actually, uh, been a point of contention between the two of—"

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Dad!" Sophie yelled. She so very rarely yelled at anyone that for a brief moment, Sam and Dean both were stunned into silence. When she continued, her voice was softer. "Remy hasn't done a single thing wrong. It just…it just happened! It wasn't some big conspiracy or anything, I swear. And I mean… can you honestly say you're surprised about this?"

Dean stared at her, trying to rip the mental image of her and Remy away from his brain. "I don't know," he admitted. "But Soph, he's just…he's just…."

"What?" Sophie asked sharply. "He's just _what_?"

Dean seemed to be struggling to word whatever it was he wanted to say, as what usually happened when the moment started to lend itself towards feelings and emotions, so Sam picked up the slack. "What Dean wants to say," he said slowly, "is that pursuing anything with Remy beyond friendship is just going to break your heart."

At that, Sophie lifted an eyebrow in confusion. That hadn't been what she'd expected. "What?"

"He's immortal, Soph," Dean cut in. "And as much as I'd like you to be, you're not. You're going to age, and you're going to live a long, successful, amazing life…and he's always going to be what he is."

She looked at him, letting the truth of his words sink in. She didn't know why, but they made her angry. "Whatever," she snapped. "I'm seventeen, and he's an angel, it's not like you can control who I kiss or don't kiss."

"Sophie, please, I'm begging you, spare me the 'But Daddy I love him' spiel."

"He's good, Dad," Sophie tried, this time her voice pleading with him. She hated that she sounded desperate, not because she was beneath begging to her dad, but because she knew Dean was right, and she desperately wanted him to be wrong. "He's just _good_."

"He is," Dean agreed. "He's one of the good ones, Soph, I know that. But he's just not good for you."

Sophie rolled her eyes. "How about I spare you the 'But Daddy I love him' spiel if you spare me the 'he's no good for you' spiel?"

"Sophie, this is serious."

She just shook her head. "I can't deal with this Lifetime movie crap right now, I need to find Remy and make sure he doesn't hate me."

"Did you not hear a single thing we just said?" Dean said to her, exasperated.

"I did," she said. "I just disagree."

"Sophie—"

"Look, at the very least, Remy is still my friend. I just want to talk to him," she said, crossing her arms. "So either grant him the ability to pop back here without fear of being impaled by your stab-happy self, or I'm gonna go find him on my own."

Dean stared at her, considering her words. He knew she was too stubborn to get an outright no, so he began negotiating. "I get to stay in the room while you talk."

Her eyes widened. "No way! This isn't the antebellum South, I don't need a chaperone."

"Like hell you don't—"

"Dean, how about we just stand outside," Sam cut in, throwing Dean a look. "We give them ten minutes to talk it out."

Dean stared at Sophie, gauging her feelings. "If I even get the slightest notion that anything is happening in there other than talking, I'm killing him."

"Sure, Dad."

"I'm serious."

She paused, giving him a look. "Can we just go back to you only being angry about the tattoo?" she asked in a small voice.

"Ten minutes," was all Dean replied to her, and then he looked up and called out. "Hey! Winged asshole! Get in here!"

The ever-familiar whooshing of wings greeted their ears. "I've been summoned," Remy said, standing at the foot of Sophie's bed. "Quite rudely, I'll add."

"Congratulations, you're the lucky winner of a ten minute conversation with my daughter," Dean told him gruffly. "If you think for one second you're gonna be able to do in ten minutes what should be done in one long night _between consenting adult humans_, I will chop you into several pieces and scatter you across every continent on this planet, are we clear?"

"Crystal," Remy responded.

"Every. Continent."

"He heard you the first time, Dad," Sophie said, mortified.

"Hearing something twice never killed anyone," Dean snapped. He turned back to Remy. "Maybe, while you two are talking, you think about the fact that Sophie is a _child_. A _human child_."

Remy narrowed his eyes. "Dean, despite what you think, I'm not some…predator. You know that. We're just gonna talk, like we usually do when I come visit her here."

Dean's eyes widened. "What do you mean, _like we usually do_? Here? In her _room_?"

Sam pushed Dean towards the door. "Alright, Papa Bear, you promised them ten minutes."

"Yeah, that was _before _I learned about their regular trysts!"

"Do you even know what tryst means?" Sam asked as he forced Dean closer to the door.

"Shut up, Sam, I have a degree!"

"A high school diploma," Sam pointed out. "Barely."

"That's all you have too, you big, dumb, college dropout!"

Sam looked back at Sophie. "I wouldn't count on ten total minutes, Soph."

She nodded, and without further ado, Sam shoved an unwilling Dean out of the door, shutting it tightly behind him, muffling her dad's angry voice.

* * *

Sophie turned to look at Remy. "I'm sorry," she said, wincing a little bit. "He's…unhappy."

"Unhappy," Remy repeated. "I think you mean rabid."

"Wouldn't you be?" she said, walking over to her bookshelf, tracing the spines of her alphabetically organized books with the tip of her finger. She wanted to pick out an old, loved story to read, something she knew would distract her from the craphole of her life. "I mean, obviously you don't have kids, and neither do I, but just imagine it. Your kid, falling in love with an immortal being that's bound to break her heart into a zillion pieces."

"Falling in love?" Remy asked, eyeing her closely.

Sophie felt the blush creep to her cheeks, but she didn't veer off track. "Remy, come on. I'm not…I wouldn't have messed with our relationship and let myself kiss you if I hadn't felt like…I don't know, like it wasn't worth it."

She could feel his eyes on her, but she couldn't turn to face him, knowing that if she did, she'd quickly lose her train of thought. She waited for him to speak, and closed her eyes for a moment when he did. "And why am I bound to break your heart into a zillion pieces?" he asked carefully.

"Because you're an angel," Sophie said matter-of-factly. "You will never age and die, and I will. Kind of a problem."

"I know. I thought about that."

Sophie scoffed. "You _thought _about it. Well, that's great, now that you've deigned to think about the actual consequences of us messing around, then—"

"I can give up my grace."

Silence.

Everything stopped. Sophie's eyes froze on the title of the book she'd been thinking about rereading. _Their Eyes Were Watching God_. But she couldn't quite read the title all the way through. She was stuck for a moment, trying to decide if she'd heard him correctly, attempting to convince herself she hadn't but knowing she had.

Finally, she turned her head to look at Remy, thinking maybe he would be grinning in a way that screamed, _Had you fooled, didn't I? _But he looked dead serious, almost bored, as if this was something he'd already decided and not just thought up.

She had to say something. "I'm…I'm only seventeen—"

"You're gonna buy Dean's line about you being some idiot kid that couldn't breathe if someone didn't tell you how to? If so, fine, what arbitrary age do you need to get to before I can finally stop being called a predatory monster for wanting to be with you? I'm fine with waiting."

"No," Sophie said, shaking her head. "No, I just meant, I'm only seventeen. I…I have a lot of growing to do. How could you possibly want to give up your grace for someone who could be a totally different person in one year, five years, ten years? You…I can't possibly…you can't give up _who you are _for me, you just…you can't."

Remy smirked at her spluttering. "Ace, don't flatter yourself. Look, I've contemplated giving up my grace so many times in my life. I've always loved humanity, more so than a lot of my brothers and sisters have. I've been jealous of humanity. And that option is always there for guardians, since these bodies were designed for us, and if we relinquish our grace we just become angel souls in bodies, which is almost identical to how human bodies and souls work. We just…age as normal, without the immortality offered by our grace, and then eventually die. And…call me crazy, that's something I've always admired about humanity."

"Death?" Sophie asked skeptically. "You've admired our stunning ability to _die_?"

"Yeah," Remy said, eyes bright. "There's nothing quite so amazing as someone fiercely and unapologetically _living_ in the face of the perpetual threat of _dying_. I mean, when you think about it, it makes so much sense, why humans are the chosen ones. I ask myself all the time—can I be alive if I can't die?"

"But you _can_ die," Sophie reminded him. "If you aren't convinced about that, I could bring my dad back in, I'm sure he'd love to prove you wrong."

Remy waved away her correction. "I can die, but despite how easy you've grown to think it is, it's quite hard to kill an angel. Your family just has a unique talent for it. In all my years, I've experienced very little threat of death. Angels of any kind just aren't built like you humans, all fragile and easily smited. In fact, your proclivity for dying is exactly why I exist. To protect you. Because your weakness, and the amazing things you do to overcome it...it's weirdly beautiful."

Sophie pulled the book her hand had fallen on off of the shelf. She weighed it in her hands, comforted by the familiarity of worn, soft paper in her hands in the midst of this mind-boggling conversation. "Why, though?" she asked softly. "If you've thought about it so much in the past, why did you never do it?"

Suddenly, he was a foot away from her. She was so used to his quick angel abilities by this point that it shouldn't have shocked her at all, his poofing from one spot in her room to another. But still, his closeness rendered her oxygen-less, and her eyes were anchored to his.

"I don't know, Ace," he said slowly, like he was about to admit something he'd never put into words before. "All this time, I've been so fascinated by people and jealous of humanity, but I could never find anything about humanity to hold onto, anything to actually give my graceless life a purpose." His eyes fell onto hers, and everything was tense and serious and intimidating.

Until he smiled at her.

That half-a-smile grin that he shared almost exclusively with her, that smile that spoke of friendship and inside jokes and unspoken feelings and intimacy. "But now there's you," he said.

His smile reached his eyes, warming them up from the inside out. Sophie remembered that feeling of first kissing him, that feeling that she was being inebriated by light. That's what his eyes looked like in that moment, looking at her. "Me," she said after a moment, unable to believe him at first. "_I'm_ enough to make you want to give up your grace?"

"You don't give yourself enough credit, Ace," Remy told her shortly. "You're a truly, truly good person. And while you're not the sole reason I'd want to fully embrace humanity…you are my daily reminder of why I do."

Sophie looked up at him, feeling like every atom of her body wanted to be closer to every atom of his. "You're making it really hard to just lighten the mood with a corny joke and an awkward attempt to pretend all of this talk doesn't make me feel kind of dizzy," she said quietly.

She heard Remy laugh under his breath, a sound that made her heart skip about three beats. "God forbid we have a serious conversation," he said softly, in a voice that made her look up.

And when she did, his lips were on hers.

She could already tell that any plan of hers to just appease her dad and stay away from Remy and his lips had absolutely zero chance of working. There was something about kissing him that made her want to get closer to him, even if their bodies were already pressed against each other. In all the time she'd known him, everything about him had always made her feel safe. Kissing him made her feel no different. Being immediately in his arms was secure.

She guessed it only took having your soul connected to someone and then having that connection ripped apart to make you realize how much you needed someone, how much they made you feel grounded.

She backed up until her shoulders hit her bedroom wall. His hands were on her waist and his lips had trailed to her cheek and ear, leaving a small trail of warmth where he had explored her skin. "Remy," she said after a moment, her voice unsteady, "Remy, you know my dad is two feet outside of that door waiting for an excuse to kill you."

"I know," Remy affirmed, recapturing her lips and kissing her dizzyingly.

She leaned in for a moment, brain fogged over, and then she broke apart from him. "You know that this is exactly the kind of thing that might make him act on that desire, right?"

He smirked at her, and god, how she was ever supposed to _not _find that attractive, she had no idea. "He can try," Remy said flippantly.

"I'm serious," she said, pushing him further away. "Look, I'm not interested in a big romantic story where I say we can't be together and we spend one hundred and fifty pages breaking down all the barriers to us being together. I'm interested in just…being with you. But I also am interested in not triggering my dad's hypersensitive Murder Remy button, and him walking in on us kissing two feet away from my bed would definitely do that."

Remy chuckled, taking a step back from her. "Whatever you say, boss."

"Okay," Sophie said, slipping away from him, thinking distance might make her less inclined to accidentally start kissing him again. "When my dad and Sam come back in here, we'll tell them we're gonna keep things strictly business for right now."

Remy raised an eyebrow. "That sounds like no fun."

"We're just gonna tell them that for as long as it takes for us to figure out this whole grace situation. Because it's not something you decide in one single conversation held in my bedroom. And until we figure that out, no more spontaneously kissing me, okay? I'm not getting my hopes up for this."

Remy looked like he wanted to argue with her, but one look at her stubborn face and he just shrugged. "Fine. Your dad, your call."

She took a breath to argue with him, then stopped, confused. "Wait. We're agreeing on this?"

Remy nodded. "I'm not stupid, I know this is a weird situation. I'm already being selfish enough by just convincing myself that it's okay to be with you. It's only fair you take the reins with your family."

She smirked. "Well, thanks, I guess." She walked over to her bedroom door, almost ready to let Sam and Dean back in, but before she did, she turned to look back at Remy. Standing there, with his hands in his pockets, golden brown hair ruffled from kissing, green eyes staring back at her intently, she grinned. "And you don't need to convince yourself it's okay to be with me, Remy. It just…is. It's my dad that needs convincing."

Before he could respond, she opened up the door to reveal Sam and Dean, standing in the hall arguing under their breaths. When her door swung open, they both stopped mid-word and turned to look at her. She gave them an appraising look. "What are you two arguing about now?" she asked in an exasperated voice.

Dean looked at her, and then peeked into the room to see Remy standing by her desk, checking out her book collection. "What convent we're gonna send you off to," he told her in as serious a voice as he could muster.

Sophie rolled her eyes. "That's rich, coming from the guy who banged my arch-nemesis' mother the morning Beelzebub tried to skewer me in the forest."

"Hey," he snapped. "Low blow, I thought we had moved on from that."

"You thought wrong. Besides, it's too good of leverage."

"You're ridiculous," Dean told her sharply. "And devious."

"Thanks, I learned from the best."

"Alright, you two, stand down," Sam interrupted. "Soph, did your talk go...well?"

"It went swimmingly," she said, not taking her narrowed eyes away from Dean's annoyed face. "We've decided to elope and move to Rhode Island, where we will have three to five angel-human hybrid babies and a dog named Kale."

Sam looked helpless as Dean's face reddened. "Sophie, I'm dead serious, there's a convent freaking thirty-seven miles down the road, I checked, and I'm not opposed to dragging you there myself—"

"Dean, relax," Remy said, stepping up behind Sophie, looking at Dean in mild amusement. "We decided to put this all on hold."

Dean looked ready to scream something at him, but then he paused. "Wait. Really?"

Sophie nodded. "Life's too complicated right now to deal with hiding a relationship from you," she told her dad honestly. "Plus there's not a teenage girl in this world sneaky enough to get something like this past you. Especially with Cas as your bitch—I mean, spy."

"You're toeing the line with your sass, sweetheart," Dean said, warning in his voice.

"Look, the bottom line is, you don't need to worry about me and Remy. _Yet_. Is that good enough for you right now?"

Dean looked at her for a good, long moment. "For now," he admitted.

"Excellent," Sophie said, taking a moment to look at Remy, Sam, and Dean. "Now that we're done worrying about stuff that we shouldn't be wasting energy worrying about – lets talk about how this _Thetós _sword thingy is gonna help us kill Beelzebub."

* * *

It was one of those rare days in Los Angeles when it was raining.

The generally crystal blue sky was filled with gray, thunderous clouds, and the asphalt was steaming from the rain pounding on the ground.

Beelzebub liked L.A. Everything was fast and fiery and utterly lacking in morality. Dog eat dog, every man for himself, every other phrase that meant _do what it takes to put yourself over others_.

He certainly liked it more than Kansas, where he had spent an unfortunate amount of the past year or so. L.A. had a certain pizzazz.

And the street food was amazing.

The leader of the First Hierarchy of Hell watched the storm from the penthouse of his downtown residence. He thought, like he did every day, about the Winchesters, likely settled into their safe, secure little bunker in Lebanon, Kansas. He knew almost exactly where it was located, somewhere close to where Sophie attended high school, where she and her friends still attended. He pictured Sam, strong and silent Sam, dutifully searching and researching for a way to take him down. Then he pictured Dean, running around making the tough calls and throwing out ideas, doing everything in a feverish way so as to try and squash him into the ground.

And then there'd be young, sweet Sophie, sitting in between them, balancing them out, bringing them together.

The Winchester brothers would never know Sophie the way he did. They'd never know how pathetic she was when she begged for someone to kill her. They'd never know how all that sarcasm and witty bravado vanished out the window when confronted with Sonneillon and the other horrors of Hell.

Beelzebub grinned. He'd witnessed the chaos the Winchester brothers had been slaves to when he had first taken Sophie. He couldn't wait to see how that would play out when he finally succeeded.

More than that, he couldn't wait to have Sophie back in his possession.

He was bored nowadays. Being the world's greatest demonic force could just be so humdrum sometimes. Sometimes he missed his glory days of raping and pillaging. But now, he was a career man, and he had to do some of the dull work of organizing and plotting the age of his dominion.

And having the little Winchester girl to play with for a bit before corrupting her soul completely and using it to spring Lucifer's Cage...that would do wonders for his spirits.

He turned away from the window, not needing to watch the storm raging outside to know the havoc it was wreaking on L.A. "Matilda!" he barked.

A tall, beautiful brunette woman walked into the room wearing a black skirt and a sharp blazer. "Yes, Lord Beelzebub?"

"I need you to get a message to the Winchesters. I don't care how you get it to them, as long as they receive it. But I award points for creativity."

Matilda, though surprised, looked unfazed. Beelzebub liked that about his most recent head assistant. She was shrewd and compliant, the two best qualities a tyrant such as himself could ask for.

"What's the message?" she asked.

Beelzebub looked back out of the window. Los Angeles on a rainy day was fascinating. People didn't know what to do, the streets looked like the entrance of Hell, and the hope of yesterday's sun was nothing more than a fond, cherished memory.

"Sir?" Matilda prodded. "What message would you like me to relay to the Winchesters?"

Beelzebub turned back towards her, grinning from ear to ear, blue eyes shining.

"_Soon_."

**As always, dear friends, thanks for reading NINETY-EIGHT WHOLE CHAPTERS. Honestly at this point you're more accomplished than I am just for sticking around for this long.**

**There will be more coming your way... _Soon_. Haha. Get it. I crack myself up (SO sorry it's 3 AM as I write this forgive me).**

**~ Lacey :)**

**PS - Someone asked if I modeled Remy on Logan from Gilmore Girls. Oddly enough, while I have since binge-watched all of Gilmore Girls and am utterly obsessed with it, I had not seen it at the time I'd written Remy's character. The whole 'Ace' thing is a huge coincidence...but, I mean, Ace is a common term of endearment, so that's not super crazy. I'm actually hella #TeamJess and think Logan's sort of an arrogant, entitled jerk sometimes, so I wouldn't have purposefully based a character off of him. **


	99. Chapter 99: If I Die Before I Wake

**Small atom bomb detonates at the end. You've been warned.**

_Chapter 99: If I Die Before I Wake_

When Sophie woke up the next morning after everything had gone down between Sam and Dean and Remy, she groaned and desperately wished to go back to sleep.

She had to go to school.

It wasn't that it was a huge deal, really. She'd already gotten over the hump of going back after deciding to actually work hard in school again, and she'd tackled all of the extra credit her teachers had been surprisingly willing to give to her once she demonstrated a renewed sense of initiative.

She was back in a good place. In fact, she was even planning on getting lunch with Jamie again, who had finally decided to give her a second – third? – chance after the whole making-out-with-Mason-after-breaking-her-twin-brother's-heart debacle.

Sophie wasn't even going to think about potentially reconciling with Jack. One step at a time.

But it wasn't socializing or actual schoolwork that Sophie wasn't looking forward to. It was six hours of Remy without the highly effective buffer of Dean Winchester's presence that she didn't want to endure.

She knew it was stupid. She knew she should've been independent enough and not enamored enough with her guardian angel to just ignore him until all of the logistics of their relationship – whatever it was – could be resolved. But she couldn't help it. He was just always around, and so attractive, and so difficult to _not _look at, and he had this way of making her feel like she was the only thing he was thinking about when he looked at her, and –

"Hey!" Her door shook under the weight of a pounding fist. "Wake up, angel harlot, you need to go learn things!"

She let out a frustrated yell. "What creepy porno taught you how to be a parent?" she yelled in a sleep-cracked voice.

"I resent that," she heard her dad say on the other side of the door, and she listened as his footsteps led away from the door.

Accepting her fate, Sophie rolled out of bed and stumbled over to her closet, pulling on a pair of jeans and a soft light blue sweater. It was a chilly day, as November had somehow managed to inch its way into December and the weather forecast predicted some light snowfall, so Sophie braided her hair into two pigtails and shoved a cream colored beanie on over her head. Then she pulled on her shoes, grabbed her backpack, and headed out of the door.

Sophie made her way into the kitchen, where Dean sat in his robe, drinking coffee and holding a newspaper in his hand. He glanced up at her when she walked in, saw her make a beeline for the coffee maker, and promptly glanced back down.

Sixty seconds later she was sitting down at the table with him. "Angel harlot?" she said pointedly, taking a drink of her coffee.

Dean shrugged. "I almost used concubine instead, but at the last minute I couldn't remember what a concubine was."

She glared at him. "I don't know what aspect of your personality I need to start attacking first, your chauvinism or your ignorance."

"I'm a complicated man," Dean said proudly.

"Not really," Sophie grumbled. She screwed the cap onto her coffee mug and stood up. "I'm going to school. See you later." She threw her backpack over her shoulder, grabbed her coffee and keys, and then looked back down at her dad. "Seriously, don't call people harlots, especially if they are not only _not _harlots, they've never even had sex once before in their entire lives. And you know what, even if I was the biggest slut in the world, you should just refrain from saying that. It's super offensive."

Dean heaved a big breath. "Fine, fine, I'm sorry I called you a harlot."

She gave him a grin and turned around to see Sam had just walked into the kitchen, looking affronted. "You called your daughter a _harlot_?"

Dean just gave him an annoyed look and looked back at Sophie. "Have a good day at school, kiddo."

She rolled her eyes. "Sure."

As she flounced out, she heard Sam raise his voice. "Dean, honestly, sometimes you're a great dad and then sometimes I wonder how in all of your years of talking to women you haven't taken a bullet to the crotch."

She smirked, not even waiting to eavesdrop on Dean's reply, and then escaped to her car.

* * *

When she got to school, she made a beeline for Mr. D's class.

That's what she usually did in the mornings now, since she dreaded running into Jack or Mason or Remy or, for a time, Jamie. It was easier to just get to class early and talk to Mr. D.

As it turned out, she'd spent a lot of time hating Mr. D for no reason at all, and he was actually kind of cool. He knew a lot about literature – maybe a little too much – and he was an excellent listener. He had a keen sense for when Sophie needed to be prodded to talk more, or when he needed to just sit comfortably in silence.

His was the only class she had somehow managed to boost her grade back up to an A in, but with his help, she was turning her Ds into Cs and her Cs into Bs in all of her other classes, too. He was crazy smart in everything she was taking, and he was helping her out in the mornings with her other assignments as well.

She opened the door and saw Mr. D sitting at his desk, grading papers. He looked up as she walked in. "Good morning, Sophie," he said, somewhat distractedly. "I'm actually just grading your last essay."

"How is it?" she asked, sitting down at her familiar table in the back of the room.

"I won't lie, it's not your best," he told her. "But it's still pretty good. Probably an A minus."

"An A minus is about three hundred times better than how I was doing in August, so I'll take it," Sophie said. She leaned back and sighed. "The next test is the midterm exam, right?"

"Yeah."

"Is it hard?"

"It shouldn't be."

She raised an eyebrow. "Is that code for yes, it's hard?"

He laughed. "No, Sophie, it's not code. It won't be hard for you, you've been working too hard for it to be difficult."

Sophie grinned. "Great. Leaves me more time to study for math."

Mr. D smirked. "Yeah, judging by your last assignment, that's probably not a bad idea."

At that moment the bell rang, and Sophie frowned. "Ugh."

Mr. D's smirk broadened. "Brace yourself, Sophie, your peers are coming."

She exhaled and sat back in her chair as kids began to filter into the classroom. She watched as they filed in one by one, but then looked down at her hands when Remy walked in.

That was a door she wasn't quite willing to open or close yet, simply because she couldn't quite determine whether the door was opened or closed to begin with.

So she decidedly ignored him as he walked in and took the seat directly in front of her, to her great annoyance. He turned around and gave her an amused look, as if her annoyance were palpable, before turning back around and getting out his things for class.

Once everyone was settled, Mr. D went to the front of the class, a large stack of papers in his hands. "Good morning, guys," he said, walking to the side of the class and tossing one paper on a student's desk. "I've got essays to get back to all of you."

There was a communal groan that rumbled through the class, which Mr. D seemed to be amused by. "Don't worry, guys, you all did fine. For the most part." The groan continued as Mr. D chuckled, placing graded essays on the students' desks. "I also should remind you that midterms are in a week! So with your essay I'm passing out study guides. We'll review a little over the next couple of days, but guys, I can't stress enough how important it is that you _actually need to have read _books to do well on this exam. So for you crammers in here, get going." He passed by Sophie's desk, dropping papers on it. "And for those of you who've more or less kept up with the reading and the work for this class, your hard work is gonna pay off, I promise."

He glanced down at her for a moment, and she couldn't help but feel a tinge of warmth in her chest. It was nice to have someone believe in her after every stupid decision she had made. It was nice to have someone be a little proud of her.

Mr. D passed out the rest of the papers and the class continued uneventfully, ending with the final bell, at which time Sophie made her way swiftly out of the room to avoid an awkward encounter with Remy.

Right as she turned the corner, she bumped into someone's shoulder. "Sorry," she mumbled, moving to push past them.

"Um, hello, it's me," a familiar voice said, and Sophie lifted her head to meet familiar blue eyes.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, a somewhat shy smile falling upon her face. "Jamie! I didn't, uh, see you. Sorry."

Jamie had somehow gotten prettier since they had stopped talking. She was a little taller, and it looked like the yoga classes she had started taking were paying off. Sophie had a lot of questions for her – how college apps were going, how everything was with Harry, how the whole Williams family was doing, did her dog Martha take to the cancer treatment well, did she ever miss having Sophie in her life?

Jamie, however, just returned the small smile. "No biggie. We're still on for lunch, right?"

Sophie nodded, perhaps too enthusiastically. "Yes. Definitely."

Jamie adjusted the strap of her backpack. "Cool. I'll see you then."

Sophie nodded back and watched as Jamie flounced off to her next class. As she turned around to make her way down the opposite side of the hall, she ran straight into a tall body.

"'Sup, Ace."

Sophie scowled, fixing the hair that had been messed up by the collision and avoiding eye contact. "Remy, God, why do you take pleasure in making me feel like I'm incapable of walking two feet without plowing headfirst into someone like freaking Bella Swan."

"That's all your doing, Soph," Remy said with a grin. He glanced down the hallway behind her. "Make up with Jamie?"

"Working on it," she said, sidestepping Remy and continuing down the hall to her next class, knowing he'd follow her. "We're getting lunch."

"That's good," Remy said. "You were always happier when you two were friends."

"Yeah," Sophie sighed. "Well, that's the goal."

"You could stand to be happier," Remy told her. "Nothing makes you that happy anymore."

She shrugged. "I don't know, I'm getting better. More things make me happy now than they did a month ago. Like you, for instance."

Remy smirked. "I can't tell if you're just sucking up to me or if that's a genuine compliment."

"You'll never know," she said slyly, and then without warning, she disappeared into her next classroom.

* * *

When lunchtime came, Jamie beat Sophie to the bench they had agreed to meet up at. When Sophie arrived, Jamie already had her turkey sandwich out and was in the middle of unscrewing the cap of her water bottle, and when she looked up to see Sophie approaching, she smiled.

"Long time no talk, Winchester," she said teasingly.

Somewhat shyly, Sophie sat down next to her and grabbed her lunch out of her backpack. "Yeah, sorry about that," she mumbled. "I…had a bad couple of months. But I'm feeling much more myself nowadays."

Jamie nodded, giving her a soft smile. "I can tell. And I'm glad. You kind of scared me for a little while there, when you suddenly became best friends with Mason."

Sophie couldn't help but cringe. "Not my best life choice," she admitted.

Jamie shrugged. "You're right about that."

Sophie just nodded. There was no arguing that one. "Well, like I said. I'm getting back to being myself now. For the most part."

Jamie gave Sophie a sideways glance. "Not to get right into the middle of things right at the beginning of our talk, but I have to ask – what happened?"

Sophie was silent. How could she possibly begin?

Jamie continued. "I mean, everything was fine, for the most part. And then suddenly you disappear off the face of the earth for months, and you break my brother's heart, and then when you magically reappear... you're kind of a total heartless bitch."

Sophie couldn't help but laugh. "Jamie, believe it or not, it's actually really nice to hear someone say that out loud. I was the worst."

"You were," Jamie affirmed. "So what was it? Clearly, that's not who you are, not really. What happened?"

Sophie leaned back on the bench, passing her peanut butter and jelly sandwich back and forth between her hands. "I can't really explain it all. But, um, it was just stuff with my family. My dad and my uncle have…an argument with this guy, and the guy, um, kind of pulled me into it, and it was just…ugly. And it turned me into someone I wasn't." She heaved a big sigh. "I'm sorry, that was so vague. I just…I just can't really tell you the whole story, partially because I don't really get it all myself…."

Jamie nodded. "It's okay, I get it. Some things are hard to tell. You'll get to it when you're ready."

Sophie lifted an eyebrow. "So…does that mean you still want to be my friend until I'm ready to be at that point?"

Her friend smiled. "Don't be so dramatic, Sophie, of course that's what it means."

Sophie could've cried. These past few months, tough as they had been, had been filled with a lot of people who had been there for Sophie when she'd needed it most – her dad, Sam, Cas, Remy, even Mr. D. But her heart had ached at the loss of Jamie in her life, her one female friend that knew nothing of the supernatural world and still loved Sophie for who she was. And it had sucked not having Jamie in her life, even though Sophie knew it was entirely her own fault.

"Well," Sophie said after a moment of collecting herself, determined not to get all mushy and emotional on a bench where the whole school could see her. "We have a lot to catch up on."

Jamie grinned. "Yeah. We do."

* * *

It had been as good of a day as Sophie had had in a long time.

Lunch with Jamie had been a breath of fresh air. The two of them talked for so long they were late to their sixth period classes, but not before they'd agreed to meet up at a nearby froyo shop to continue their conversation after school. Sophie felt genuine happiness for the first time in too long.

Life was finally getting back on track.

She had her family. She had her sense of responsibility. She had Remy. She had Jamie. She had her _life_.

She wouldn't go so far as to say everything was perfect, but it was for damn sure that everything was _better_.

Which had Sophie worried. Usually when things in her life were starting to look up, something came along and shot everything down.

Maybe this time was different. Maybe things could go her way for once.

But Sophie had to admit, in a world where Beelzebub was in the picture, it wasn't exactly the safest bet to make that he wouldn't go around and mess things up.

Once school was out, Sophie met up with Jamie in the parking lot, smiling as her friend approached. "Hey," she greeted her. "How was history with Richardson?"

"Terrible, as always," Jamie sighed. "But now we're getting froyo, so let's not ruin our time by talking about that god awful teacher."

Sophie snorted. "C'mon, he's not _that _bad."

"He sent Alyssa to Grayling's office because her phone went off in class," Jamie said. "Like, seriously, whose phone _hasn't _gone off in class at some point?" Sophie was about to timidly put her hand in the air when Jamie just shook her head. "Nope, don't wanna hear it. Once a goody two shoes, always a goody two shoes, even if you did have a spurt of rebellion in there somewhere. But really, I'm dying, let's finish this conversation at Pep's."

"Works for me," Sophie said as they walked to their cars, which were parked in the same row. "So…um, how's Jack getting home, if you're…."

Jamie unlocked the door to her car and opened it. "He's staying late to finish up a project with some guys from his Spanish class, and then I think he's just going to stay at one of their houses to finish it up since it's due tomorrow."

Sophie nodded. "Gotcha. Okay, see you at Pep's."

They both slipped into their cars and began the drive to Pep's, which was about a fifteen minute drive from Lebanon Central. As she drove, Sophie was – for the first time in a long time – aware of the fact that her radio was silent. For the most part, since coming back from the dead, she'd avoided music. Music usually forced her to feel things, and after Hell, Sophie had preferred not to feel and had pretty much done everything she could do to avoid sensation of any kind.

But she was in a much different place than she'd been in when she'd crawled out of her grave in North Carolina.

She turned her stereo on and listened as the device prepared to play the last CD that she'd had playing before dying. When she heard the opening song, she couldn't help but smile.

It was a little cold outside, but Sophie still rolled down her windows and turned the volume up to an obscene level. And she sang to the song with unadulterated carelessness, letting herself be a kid, letting herself act like a teenage girl for once.

"_And I don't know how it gets better than this, you take my hand and drag me headfirst, fearless!" _Sophie practically yelled into the open air. She didn't care that she couldn't hold a tune to save her life at that decibel, or that passerby would think she was crazy or airheaded, or that Dean would crucify her for her music choice. She just let go.

She was well into the fourth or fifth song when she pulled into Pep's, reluctantly shutting off the music and turning the car off as she went to go meet up with Jamie.

Jamie gave her a look as they walked into the froyo shop. "I could hear your music from my car," she laughed, making her way to the register to get some sample cups. "That was some retro Taylor Swift action you had going on there."

Sophie smirked. "Don't act like you've never been there."

"This is true."

They chatted about silly things while they made their desserts, paid for them, and settled down at the corner table of the shop. Sophie had forgotten how nice it was to talk about the stupidest things – who was dating who at school, where everyone was guessing prom would be held, who was planning their big senior Bash for the end of the year. It was a lot of inane conversation about boys and school and Kansas and cliques, and not a word was said about Beelzebub, which made Sophie happy.

They were mid-conversation about who the hottest teacher was at Lebanon ("It's definitely Mr. D." "Ew, Jamie, no, it's definitely Mr. Evans, plus he teaches chemistry and that's way sexier than English") when Jamie's phone started ringing. She looked down and shot Sophie an apologetic glance. "It's my mom," she said, "hold on one second."

"Tell her I said hi," Sophie said without thinking. Then she reconsidered. "Well, if that wouldn't be weird."

Jamie snorted and answered the phone. "Hey, mom, what's up…no, I'm at Pep's with Sophie…yeah, she says hi too…he's at Mark's, they're finishing their Spanish project…yeah, I'll ask." She took the phone away from her ear. "Mom wants to know if you want to come over for dinner. She's making chicken parm."

Sophie's mouth dropped open slightly before she could recover. "Um…yeah, I mean, I need to check with my dad, but I'd…I'd love to."

"Great!" Jamie put the phone back to her ear. "She's going to ask her dad, but it should be okay! Alright, love you too, bye." Jamie tucked her phone away and grinned at Sophie. "Wow, you haven't been over for dinner in forever, this is gonna be great."

Suddenly, Sophie found herself nervous. "The last time I came over for dinner, I was dating Jack."

Jamie shrugged. "So? Look, my parents have _eleven children_, Sophie. They've been through more boyfriends – and even a couple girlfriends – than most parents could ever contemplate in their very worst nightmares. Trust me, there will be no hard feelings at all. They love you. They ask about you all the time."

"They do?" Sophie asked, surprised.

Jamie gave a small grin. "Yeah. I mean, they know how much you mean to Jack, but they also know how much you mean to me. It's kind of weird and not ideal, but still, you're one of my closest friends. Even if it hasn't felt that way for a while."

"Yeah," Sophie sighed. "Well, I'll just text my dad and let him know I won't be home anytime soon, and then we can just head back to your house."

"Sure, after I finish this," Jamie said with a mouthful of froyo, which Sophie smirked at as she pulled out her phone and sent a message in the group chat she had with Sam and Dean.

_Gonna get dinner with Jamie. Friend bonding, not drinking, I promise. Be home later._

Almost immediately, she got a response from Sam.

_Drive safe. Let us know when you're coming home._

And then, right after that message, a text from Dean.

_We're breathalyzing you when you get home._

_ Not kidding._

Then he attached a picture of a breathalyzer in his hand, at which Sophie rolled her eyes and put her phone away. "Okay, I'm good to go."

"Why the eye roll?" Jamie asked, grabbing her keys out of her bag and gathering all of her trash to throw away.

"Because my dad said he's breathalyzing me when I get home to make sure I haven't actually been out drinking," Sophie sighed. "And I wish that was a lie."

Jamie laughed. "Your dad is so weird. Great, but weird."

Sophie nodded. "The perfect description for him. You ready?"

"Ready."

They walked out of Pep's and again vanished into their respective cars, and about twenty minutes later they arrived at the Williams' house.

* * *

Walking back into the Williams' house made Sophie finally understand just what nostalgia felt like. She'd felt it before, thinking about her mom and her life before Sam and Dean. But what she was feeling now was stronger. It was the life that she'd had before dying. And it was so, so different, and so, so similar, and it freaked her out.

But it also made her feel warm. Because she loved the Williams. Even though every single thing that could have possibly went wrong did in fact go wrong when it came to her relationship with Jack, that did nothing to change the kind of person he was or the kind of people his family were. And they were great. They were all great. And she'd missed them.

When she walked into the foyer, the smell of dinner hit her in the face and she sighed. Jamie grinned. "I know, it smells amazing, right?"

"Like a dream," Sophie practically moaned. She loved Sam and Dean more than anything, but "home cooked meal" was not in their vocabulary.

Right at that moment, Mrs. Williams poked her head into the foyer, beaming. "Sophie! It's so wonderful to see you, how are you doing?"

"I'm doing well, thanks," Sophie responded. "And thank you for having me over!"

"Anytime, Sophie, and I mean it," she said. "Dinner's going to be ready in about ten minutes if you girls want to set the table! It'll just be you two and me and Mark tonight."

"Sure thing, Mom," Jamie said, steering Sophie towards the kitchen, where they grabbed plates and utensils for the four of them and headed to the dining room. "Seriously, Sophie, I'm so glad you're here."

Sophie grinned as she set the plates down at the table. "Me too. I almost forgot how incredible your family is. And how awesome your mom's cooking is."

Jamie nodded, placing the knives and forks where they needed to go. "Yeah, and it's just…I don't know, you're the only friend I ever had who just _got _me without needing to change me or change yourself to hang out with me, and it was just…it was hard without you around."

Sophie looked at Jamie from across the table, at the wistful look on Jamie's face. "Hey," she said, capturing her friend's attention so that her green eyes met Jamie's blue ones. "I love you, you know that, right?"

Jamie grinned and then gave a little laugh. "Yeah, I know. I love you, too."

Sophie exhaled. "Okay then," she said, and then they two of them finished setting the table just as Mrs. Williams' entered the room with a steaming plate in her hands that smelled heavenly.

"Hope you two are hungry," Mrs. Williams said as she set the plate down and wiped her hands on her jeans. "Mark's the better cook out of the two of us, but even he'll admit that when it comes to chicken parm, I'm the top dog in the house." She quickly ran out of the kitchen and yelled up the stairs. "Mark, soup's on! And Sophie's here!"

Sophie heard footsteps on the second floor grow louder and louder as they walked to the staircase and began to descend. When Mr. Williams walked into the dining room and saw Sophie, he smiled, "Hey there, Soph," he said warmly. "Glad to see you around here again."

"Thanks," she said. "It's good to see you, too."

"Last time I saw you, you beat the hell out of me in chess," he told her in mocking seriousness.

Sophie laughed. "Yeah, sorry we ended things on such a sour note."

Mr. Williams smiled at her. "Luckily I'm brimming with second chances. But not before we eat dinner, because I haven't eaten all day and I'm starving."

Sophie helped Jamie and Mr. and Mrs. Williams put the rest of the food on the table, and then they all sat down and began to eat.

The Williams were great. It could have been the most awkward thing in the world, eating dinner with her ex-boyfriend's parents. But they seemed to also realize that their son's ex-girlfriend was also their daughter's closest friend, and so they acted like the warm and caring couple they'd always been.

And as they talked and ate, Sophie was hit with a strong, unwavering realization.

This was what she wanted.

Hell had made her think that all that there was for her in life was hunting. Sure, there could be love and family and good times mixed up in hunting, but she had been convinced that Hell had turned her into the kind of person that _needed _hunting, that _needed _to spend her life ridding the world of the evil forces that had gripped her soul and dragged it screaming and bleeding down into the Pit.

But sitting here with Jamie and her parents, listening to them talk and laugh about things that were probably less important than saving the world from the forces of evil but still so important to the love that they all had for each other, Sophie could see it.

She could see herself in a similar house, maybe smaller, with a husband and some kids and a plethora of inside jokes to laugh about over a dinner she'd made with her own two hands. She could imagine dropping kids off at baseball practice or piano lessons and working in an office until it was time to pick the kids up from school and falling asleep next to someone who wasn't going to disappear at odd hours to go kill ghosts or demons or vampires.

She could see it all so clearly here with the Williams.

And she wanted it.

She smiled as she stuffed another piece of chicken parm in her mouth and as Jamie argued with her dad about some episode of their mutual favorite show, _The West Wing_, and thought about how happy Dean would be if she ever told him she didn't think hunting was in her future.

Sophie glanced at the clock in the dining room after a little while and saw with surprise that it was nearly eight o'clock. She probably needed to be thinking about going back to the bunker soon. She pushed her chair away from the table after she'd taken her last bite. "I'm just going to go to the restroom, excuse me," she said, getting up and making her way to the bathroom.

When she got in and closed the door, she took her phone out of her pocket and looked at the screen to find about twenty texts from Sam and Dean going back and forth arguing about the breathalyzer and about how that was a violation of trust, which she rolled her eyes at. The two of them were probably five feet away from each other and arguing over text message like a couple of middle schoolers, having only recently discovered the existence of the group chat feature on their phones.

She sent a quick text to them that read _Dinner with ex's parents was actually great, thanks for asking. Be home before nine. _

She put her phone back in her pocket and then looked at her face in the mirror. Same lightly freckled skin, same green eyes, same slightly curly hair that couldn't seem to decide if it wanted to be blonde or red.

She grinned at herself. This was the face of someone who, in that moment, could tell her father that once this craziness with Beelzebub was over, she didn't want to hunt anymore. She could lead a normal life, the kind of life where people like Jamie could be her friend and her family could be like the Williams family.

The light above the mirror flickered, and Sophie exhaled. Time to go back out there and see what delicious dessert Mrs. Williams had prepared, because she always had something.

She stepped out of the bathroom and started walking back to the dining room, but the moment she shut the door she knew something was off. The house was quiet. The Williams were just in the next room, but there was no sound. Not a single clink of a fork on a plate nor a hint of that classic Jamie snorting laugh.

Heartbeat picking up, Sophie prepared to turn right from the hall into the dining room when suddenly, a dark figure stepped out of the room and right into her line of sight.

Sophie's mouth hung open. "Remy?"

Remy was looking at her with wide, uncertain eyes, and the expression on his face scared her. She had rarely, if ever, seen something like it on his face before.

"Remy, what are you doing here?" she said under her breath. "The Williams are in there, you're going to scare the hell out of them!"

The looked remained on Remy's face, making strange things happen in Sophie's stomach. "Sophie…." he said after a moment, his expression agonized.

"Remy…what's going on?" When he didn't say anything, Sophie's heartbeat quickened to an almost painful pace. She took a step forward, planning to step into the dining room. "What's—"

"Don't go in there," Remy said sharply, causing Sophie to look at him in shock. Remy had never pleaded with her before, but that's what it sounded like he was doing now. "Sophie, do not go in there."

Sophie's body reacted on pure instinct. She shoved Remy with every ounce of strength in her body, and while she knew she had no real ability to knock an angel physically off of his feet, he seemed to be unprepared for just how determined she was and was unable to grab her arm before she slipped into the dining room.

Blood.

That was all she could see. Blood splattered over the table, the chairs, the floors, the walls, the three motionless, glassy-eyed, open-mouthed bodies splayed in the chairs with torn limbs and slit throats. Blood dripping from the tablecloth slowly and methodically into an ever-growing red sea on the hardwood floor. Blood leaving a stench so sickening and overwhelming that Sophie felt the need to empty the contents of her stomach onto the floor, but was too frozen to do so.

Blood swiped in hurried strokes across the dining room wall, forming a simple four letter word that broke Sophie's stillness and destroyed her ability to control her body, sending her slipping to her knees, which were soon coated in still-warm blood.

_Soon_.

She could feel Remy's hands on her shoulders. She could tell he was saying something, she could tell he was trying to get her to move, but she could see him, couldn't feel him, couldn't hear him.

All she could hear was an echoing in her head, in a voice she could never forget.

_Soon. Soon. Soon. Soon..._

The only thing she could see was Jamie's face. Her face caught in the middle of a laugh, lips twisted upward and coated in red. Her blue eyes open.

Dead.

And Sophie screamed.

**Well. I'm back from my hiatus (admittedly longer than 5 weeks, sry). Let's hit the ground and run, shall we?**

**Until next time ~ Lacey**


End file.
